


The Sunshine Sanctuary for (Small) Dragons

by element78



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Overwatch, M/M, Minor Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Minor Violence, Rancher!McCree, kind of fake dating, mentions of animal butchery as associated with a working ranch but nothing graphic, my apologies to sir terry pratchett, post-crisis au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 17:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 56,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14116932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/element78/pseuds/element78
Summary: In a world where dragons come in two sizes, Hanzo Shimada lives a quiet life working at a sanctuary that rescues and cares for small dragons.  Then his neighbor discovers two very large, and very illegal, dragons in a barn, and recruits Hanzo, and a reluctant Jesse McCree, to keep them safe.Easier said than done, when the dragons themselves are their own worst enemies.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this was a labor of love, done mostly to see if I actually could, since doing pretty much anything to other people's schedules has never been a strong point of mine. And ta-da, I made it, my fear of disappointing people won the battle. That said, it was great, and I am glad to know I can do it, even if it involved a lot of staring blankly at a word count that had not moved once in days. A thanks to Dee for hosting the event and trusting me to do what I was meant to do even when I played turtle for a while, and my partner Danni for their awesome art and patience with me.
> 
>  
> 
> The art is on Danni's tumblr here: https://dannidoodle.tumblr.com/post/172326483897/big-bang-art-here-is-the-other-half-to-the
> 
>  
> 
> (and a special shout-out to the author from whom I borrowed the title, and who would most likely disapprove of my dragons. GNU, Terry Pratchett.)

The message came almost before he was properly awake, while he was still blinking at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. The angry-wasp buzz of his phone on his nightstand turned his head, but did not draw him out of the bathroom, not even when it repeated itself seconds later. It was barely past six in the morning and there were limits on his willingness to socialize.

He checked it a little while later, when the water for the tea was heating. Text messages, oddly enough, three of them. The first was only an address- not even an address, just a street intersection. The second was a polite request for him to come out there as soon as possible. The third one, though, was the one that worried him.

_pls come hanzo I don’t know what to do_

Hanzo looked at the sender ID, sighed, and reached over to turn the stove off.

* * *

Efi was waiting for him at the intersection, sitting in the shadow of the line of trees planted along the shoulder of the larger of the roads. She was on her feet even as Hanzo pulled off the road, barely waiting for the car to stop moving before she was circling around in front of it to approach his window. Hanzo obliging rolled it down for her.

“I have to get to work,” he began, trying to preempt- whatever this was. He had no honest idea, actually. He wasn’t even sure how she had his phone number.

“I need your help,” she said in return, and Hanzo parked the car and got out with a tired sigh. Efi Oladele was not the sort of person who casually asked for other’s help, which was why he had been willing to drop everything and come out here; since he was here, he might as well follow through.

She led him across the road and through the tree line, and gestured ahead towards a farmhouse set far back on a field. “Do you know Robert Hamilton?” she asked.

“No,” Hanzo admitted easily as they set out across the field. He shortened his stride so Efi wasn’t trotting to keep up with him, watching her from the corner of his eye. She was tall for her age, but she always made him feel mildly anxious- she was a gangly child, skinny arms and long legs promising an impressive height when she grew into it, but that currently made her look like a bundle of sticks. She looked fragile, so easily broken by a moment’s careless handling.

“He was in the robotics forum with me,” she said. “He passed away last week.”

“My condolences,” Hanzo said. Efi spared him a quick, grateful smile, then nipped in closer to him, herding him into an arc around the house.

“He managed to send me a message before he,” she began, and wavered in both voice and stride. Her eyes were glittering with unshed tears and she rubbed her hand over them almost angrily. “We weren’t friends,” she told Hanzo determinedly, as if she needed him to understand this. “He just knew I lived close. So he left me a private message and asked me to look after them.”

“Them?” Hanzo asked, and Efi gestured ahead.

His first thought, when they came around the corner of the house and he laid eyes on the structure beyond, was that it was an old twentieth-century bomb shelter. It was metal, dully shining in the sunlight, and looked considerably sturdier than the average thin-walled storage sheds favored in these parts. It stood well apart from the house and away from any trees that might blow over and damage its roof, and there was a truly intimidating amount of security on the door, including at least one bio-scanner. Then he saw the brick-red coloring, the peaked roof, and realized it was meant to be a barn.

Efi stopped at the door and began to fiddle with the bio-scanner and the manual locks. Hanzo moved a few steps past her and rapped his knuckles on the building’s wall. The noise was deadened, muffled by the thickness of the steel. This so-called barn could probably survive a direct hit from a hypertrain. “What is he keeping in here?” he asked.

The scanner beeped and the door unlocked with several audible clunks, and Efi stepped aside, clearly intending for Hanzo to discover that for himself. He pushed the heavy door aside and stepped into the gloom of the barn, squinting against the darkness. The barn’s sensors automatically triggered the lights, but he already knew, could hear the hissing, could smell the stink of predator on the air.

The lights came on, and Hanzo was facing a solid wall of blue scales.

He took several steps backwards, his gaze locked on the barn’s contents, and gestured to Efi. “Go back to the car,” he said, voice low and steady.

“They’re safe,” she argued instantly, although she thankfully kept her words quiet. She peered around the door and pointed to a device attached to the barn wall, midway between the door and the inhabitants. “That’s a barrier generator. They can’t break through that.”

“Go back. To the car.” Hanzo ground his words out through gritted teeth.

The hissing was growing steadily and one section of scales had started moving while they talked. A clawed foot thrust out and pushed down against another scaled coiled, and from the gap a bearded muzzle emerged. Efi, despite the promised safety of the generator, gasped and jumped back. Nothing made a person doubt the security of technology quite like being faced with an animal that could easily bite them in half.

“ _Car _,” Hanzo snapped, as loud as he dared, and Efi turned and sprinted away.__

The sensor light on the generator was glowing a steady green, so Hanzo came as close as he dared to see what he could. Golden eyes tracked him as he approached the invisible barrier. The hissing was deepening in register, almost a proper growl now, a vibrato Hanzo felt shivering through his bones more than heard with his ears. More of the coils were moving, pulling in different directions as at least two long thin bodies rearranged themselves. Another foot emerged and braced itself as the muzzle opened, showing needle-sharp teeth still white with youth.

Rather than engage in a staring contest with an angry predator, Hanzo looked away, leaning to see behind the dragons. There was a horse trough half-full of water with a tail draped over it and a pile of hay in the corner as a makeshift litter box. There was no sign of any sort of food and not nearly enough room for two juvenile dragons, even if they preferred tying themselves into a giant knot over moving around. When Hanzo looked back to the dragons, he noticed that a second face had appeared, tucked safely against its sibling’s flank, eyes and mane a clear sky blue. It wasn’t growling or showing its teeth, and Hanzo would almost say it was scared- but it was the blue-tufted tail, not the gold, that slapped at the barrier in an attempt to swat Hanzo away. The barrier shimmered at the impact, barely flexing under the blow. Given a running start, they might be able to break through it, but with the limited space they were in there was no way the dragons were getting past that barrier.

Hanzo stepped back, moving towards the door, careful not to turn his back to them until he was out of their line of sight. He closed the door and reactivated the locks, then collapsed back against the barn with a deep sigh.

Well. Now what?

* * *

Efi was waiting for him by the line of trees, anxious and visibly jangling with nerves. She settled in next to him as he walked past her, trotting to keep up with his long stride.

“So?” she asked.

“I do not know what you thought I could do,” Hanzo said. He knew what he was going to have to do- he was going to have to report this to the authorities, the only people equipped to handle such beasts, and just hope that being juveniles would grant them some leniency.

“You work at a dragon sanctuary,” Efi argued.

“For lesser dragons. Those are noble dragons.” Hanzo came to a stop by his car. His head was hurting and he was suddenly exhausted, and the day had barely begun. And now he had a whole new mess to deal with, as animal control and the local law enforcement would no doubt be investigating how two noble dragons ended up in a barn in some backwater American town.

“They _are_?” Efi spun around, eyes wide, staring in the direction of the barn. “I thought noble dragons were a lot bigger than that.”

“They are, when they are fully grown. Those two are juveniles. Teenagers.” He studied Efi for a moment. “Just a bit older than you, in dragon years.”

If anything, that pushed Efi even further in the wrong direction. She put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin and gave Hanzo a surprisingly sharp glare. “Well then, you definitely have to help them,” she said. “They’re just kids. They can’t do this alone.”

_Do what alone_ , Hanzo didn’t ask. Instead he unlocked his car and opened the passenger door. “I will take you home,” he said.

Efi skipped nimbly back a few steps, her expression settling into childish obstinacy. “I have to stay here, make sure no one finds them,” she said.

“And how long do you intend to stand guard over them?” Hanzo asked. “They cannot stay in that barn forever.”

“I can make more of the barrier generators,” Efi said. “Mr. Hamilton left his notes in his office. We can move them somewhere else, just please, Hanzo. Please.” And she stared at him, wide-eyed and imploring.

Hanzo sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to relieve the tension building up between his eyes. He had a younger sibling, and thus was well-practiced at the art of being a soulless monster who said no to the puppy dog eyes. But he kept seeing those pristine white teeth, unaffected yet by age or use, and hearing Efi’s voice saying _they’re just kids_.

“I am not agreeing to anything,” Hanzo said finally, and Efi grabbed one of his hand with both of hers, hope shining in her eyes.

“But you’ll think about it,” she said. “And you’ll help us? Promise?”

Hanzo stared down at her, wondering how this had gone from a compromise on her part to her issuing orders. “I will do what I can,” he allowed, and Efi grinned hugely and wrapped her arms around his waist in a surprisingly tight hug.

“Thank you, _thank you_ , Hanzo,” she said, and broke away, darting back towards the barn. “We can do this, you’ll see,” she told him, turning so she was running backwards. “I’ve been working on something that can help, it’ll be great. Just don’t tell anyone!” And with that, she turned away and took off running towards the house, presumably to go about building more of those generators.

Hanzo stared after her, feeling somehow out of breath. Then he shook it off and closed the car door and circled around to the driver’s side. He had promised to do what he could, and if that involved calling in animal control if the dragons proved to be too feral, so be it. But- there were other options, first. He could try.

Time to deal with this.

* * *

Hanzo could still recall the first time he had seen someone with a dragon as a pet. It had been a fledgling, as long as Hanzo’s arm, draped artfully over the shoulders of the woman who owned it. He later learned that the fledgling had bitten off part of her ear while trying to play with her earring, and she had arranged to have animal control put it down. When Hanzo had reached out to animal control to offer to take the fledgling, he had been informed that it had been confiscated by- to quote the receptionist-some crazy old dude.

Which was how Hanzo Shimada learned of Jack Morrison, and eventually discovered the Sunshine Sanctuary for Small Dragons.

The delay at the barn had put Hanzo almost an hour behind schedule, so he wasn’t surprised to pull into the parking lot and find Morrison’s gas-guzzling antique motorcycle sitting in its normal spot. Hanzo parked a few spots away- when Morrison started that thing up, it clogged the air around it with a stench of fuel exhaust that tended to linger- then headed inside. The sanctuary’s receptionist sat at her desk in an alcove to the left, and nodded good morning to Hanzo as he walked past her to the door to the administration offices. Inside was an omnic watching a coffeemaker with the sort of precise consideration that only omnics were capable of. They turned and tried to catch Hanzo as he strode past, saying something about the president being busy, he needed to come back later- but Hanzo ducked around them and came up to the door marked _President of Shelter Operations_ , where he finally broke stride and hesitated.

“You’re late,” said the man inside the office. His voice was rough and gravelly, like he had done a lot of drinking and smoking and screaming over the course of his life and had ruined his throat. Hanzo pushed the ajar door open further and took a step into the office as Morrison read something off the screen of his tablet, barely sparing Hanzo a glance.

“My neighbor needed a favor,” Hanzo said, and Morrison grunted and waved a hand dismissively, clearly not caring about either Hanzo’s tardiness nor his excuse. Instead of leaving, Hanzo lingered in the doorway. “I would like your help with something,” he said finally.

Morrison glanced at him again, then set his tablet aside and turned his milky blue gaze on Hanzo, studying him with eyes that Hanzo would have sworn were sightless. He gestured towards the visitor’s chair sitting opposite the desk from him, then steepled his hands together. “Something important, I take it,” he said.

Hanzo came over to the chair but did not sit. “A question,” he clarified. “A friend asked if the statutes on noble dragons had changed recently.”

“Noble dragons,” Morrison said, scarred face perfectly blank, and Hanzo wished he knew the man better. “In America? There haven’t been any here in centuries. At least, not legally.”

Hanzo was too self-controlled to fidget, although he desperately wanted to, surprised by the swell of nervousness he had to push down. “Then they have not changed.”

“No,” Morrison agreed, still studying him closely. “Any noble dragons that aren’t declared will be euthanized.”

Declared- as in, appointed a protected status by a more dragon-friendly nation than the United States. The likelihood of the barn dragons being declared was passingly small. “Very well,” Hanzo said, voice calm despite the ice spreading through his chest. “I will inform them. Thank you for your help.”

If Morrison thought him strange- well, Morrison had most likely thought him strange from the moment they met and he had hired him anyway. It wasn’t important enough for him to devote any more time or attention to, as he was already pulling his tablet back over. Hanzo turned and left, pushing the door mostly closed behind him, then headed out of the admin area, feeling the omnic’s heavy stare on his back as he left. He made it three steps outside the door before he stopped. That had gone about as well as he had hoped. Now all he had was an ill-considered promise to a young girl and the fatalistic certainty that this was doomed from the start.

Except- he had promised.

The omnic made a low buzzing noise of irritation as Hanzo came back into the admin area, not bothering to address them as he headed back to Morrison’s office. He rapped his knuckles against the door, pushing it open as he knocked, and Morrison grunted at him.

“Is McCree coming in today?” Hanzo asked.

“Supposed to be at noon, so I’d say expect him around two,” Morrison told his tablet, frowning unhappily either at what he was reading or at McCree’s lack of punctuality.

Hanzo thanked him again and left again, adding a gracious apology to the omnic this time. Then, that done, he went to work.

* * *

Behind the sanctuary’s main building, set off away from any other structures, was a sprawling field. It had been divided into sections by fences and pathways, each section with its own little shack tucked into a corner. The air was thick with the scent of rot and old blood and choked with the susurrus of scaled bodies moving, hissing and grumbling. Then Hanzo typed his ID code into the security lock at the gate, and all noise ceased as the lock beeped and the gate swung open.

A head popped out of the shack closest to him, and Hanzo turned to offer a smile. He was rewarded with a sharp hiss and a puffed-out mane, and then the head disappeared back into the shack, pointedly dismissing him.

“Yes, I know I am late,” Hanzo said loudly, so his voice would carry. There was movement further down the walkway, another head poking out that quickly ducked away, the dragons all unified in their disdain. This was why Morrison had not given him a hard time about being late, Hanzo figured- he answered to higher authorities than Morrison’s.

Hanzo came to a stop in the first pathway intersection and sighed. Then he reached into his pocket and produced the bar of extra-dark chocolate he had obtained specifically in case of this reaction, and made a production of opening it. The crinkling of the wrapper attracted plenty of attention, noses poking out of shacks all across the field. The dragon nearest the gate, the one who had greeted him so rudely, went so far as to stick her head back out. Her mane was still fluffed up from agitation, but her nostrils flared as the wind brought her the scent of the chocolate.

The chocolate bar was sectioned into sixteen pieces, five more than there were dragons in the field. Hanzo broke one off and popped it into his mouth, trying not to grimace at the bitterness of it. Dragons preferred their chocolate darker than most humans found palatable. Hanzo had had to go into the baking aisle to find chocolate dark enough to suffice.

The dragon nearest him grumbled, like she was trying to gargle stones, and pushed herself out of her shack. She was not even ten feet long nose-to-tail, deceptively delicate in her appearance, with her long thin body and bird-like legs. Her larger cousins in the barn had been an eye-catching, almost electric blue, but she was a muddy green color, a half-hearted attempt at camouflage. Her eyes, however, were a piercing emerald, and they tracked him as he approached with a nugget of chocolate. He tossed it through the fence and she snapped it out of the air. Her eyes closed and she hummed low in her throat- forgiveness in the face of a rare treat.

They were like small children, Hanzo had found- smart and strong-willed, but not good at interpreting adult behavior and not at all concerned about societal expectations. They stayed in their pens because they knew Hanzo would be upset with them if they didn’t, but sometimes his irritation was an acceptable price to pay for some spontaneous freedom, and Hanzo would get a call telling him that one of his dragons had escaped and gorged itself on candy bars at the nearest convenience store. They got along until they didn’t, and would break through the fence to fight, then lick each others’ wounds in apology. They liked the people they liked and didn’t like the people they didn’t like and gave no indication of how they decided which was which. Hanzo’s job, despite the fancy official title of Dragon Socializer, was to be a babysitter to a bunch of scaly, oversized two-year-olds.

Somewhere in the field, another dragon issued an earsplitting shriek in protest at the display of favoritism. Hanzo smiled and sighed and broke off another piece of chocolate and moved on to the next pen. He would go into the pens when the chocolate was gone, would spend time with them, would speak to them as he cleaned the bedding in their shed, would check them over for any signs of injury or illness. Then he would go inside the vet clinic and spend time with the dragons in there, and then out to the eastern field with its seven isolated pens for unfriendly dragons who needed more socialization. And then he would start over again.

The next dragon was sitting at the fence already, expectantly waiting its bribe, and Hanzo tossed in a chocolate chunk and moved on.

* * *

The dragons told him when McCree arrived.

He had made his rounds inside and out and was back out in the main pens again, checking up on a dragon with a cracked tooth that was going to have to be removed soon, when the dragon nearest the main gate lifted her head and started clacking her jaws. Her neighbors immediately came to investigate, all pointing their noses in the same direction, watching something still beyond human perception. One started slapping the wall of his shack with his tail, a beat quickly taken up by all the others, until the air was filled with the sound of rattling bones and a pounding like a wild heartbeat. Even the dragon Hanzo had been in with abandoned him, scrambling up onto its shack for a better view, so he sighed and turned to head out of the pen. There was no working with them when they were like this.

By the time he had made it to the main gate even his deaf human ears could hear the low purr of a well-maintained engine as a vehicle approached. He unlocked the gate and stepped out, watching and waiting- and was rewarded when a truck pulled around the main building, gliding over the grass to approach the pens. It came to an easy stop broadside to Hanzo, close enough that he only had to take one step forward to reach out and touch it. When the engine shut off, the dragons also went quiet, the sudden silence made all the eerier for the noise preceding it.

Hanzo checked his phone, then glanced at the dragon nearest the gate, who was curled up in the corner closest to the truck. “He is later than I was,” he informed her. She twitched her whiskers at him, clearly unimpressed.

“Afternoon,” a new voice said, and Hanzo turned his attention to the man who had gotten out of the truck. He smiled benignly and tipped that silly hat he liked to wear at Hanzo, and when he turned away, metal jangled and glinted brightly at his heels.

Were it not for their jobs forcing them to interact, Hanzo would not have spared Jesse McCree another glance had they passed each other on the street. The man was a walking caricature, with his battered old hat and his spurred boots and that odd blanket-thing he like to drape over his shoulders when it was cold. He always wore flannel shirts worn thin and fraying at the hems and jeans with permanent stains, and he somehow always seemed to be about a week overdue on a haircut and a beard trimming. He was chewing on a cigar more often than not, and on a few occasions had showed up just sober enough for Hanzo to not go to Morrison about it. He spoke with a slow drawl, and smiled a false smile, and sometimes called Hanzo by sugary nicknames that caught him off-guard every time. Hanzo did not care for it, any of it, or McCree himself.

The dragons, of course, had a different opinion.

“Hello, pretty girl,” McCree cooed, carefully threading his left hand through the wide gaps in the chain link fence to reach the dragon. She pressed into his hand happily, allowing him to scratch his fingers through her mane and under her chin, all but purring at the attention.

“McCree,” Hanzo greeted as he went over to the truck. He waited patiently while McCree disentangled himself from the dragon and the fence and ambled over.

“So Jack said you were askin’ after me,” McCree said as he unlocked the truck’s back hatch. He spared Hanzo a brief glance, eyes sharp and searching under the wide brim of that silly hat.

“I need to make a special request,” Hanzo said as the door opened. The air inside the truck billowed out cold enough to crystallize instantly, curling like tendrils of mist around the two men. McCree plucked his hat off and hung it carefully on the corner of the door, then caught a handhold over the door and hauled himself up and into the freezer unit in the rear of the truck.

“Yeah?” he called back, in between the sounds of heavy things shifting. “How’s that?”

“I need a cow,” Hanzo said, and the noises stopped for a moment, then picked up again with the sound of something sliding along the floor.

“A cow,” McCree echoed, his tone incredulous. He reappeared in the doorway, pushing a large, sealed crate ahead of himself. “An entire cow?”

“You are a rancher, correct? Not merely a supplier?” Hanzo gestured into the truck, to the stacks of paper-wrapped meats and the blood frozen into corners and cracks where a casual cleaning would not reach. “I was lead to believe these are your animals.”

McCree stared at him, that sharp look returning to his eyes. He played the role of bumbling buffoon, and he played it well, but he tended to give himself away in moments like this. “Your little dragons would eat themselves sick on a whole cow,” he said eventually.

“Two halves, then,” Hanzo countered, and when McCree’s expression didn’t shift, he sighed. He had spent the better part of the morning debating with himself over what lie to tell McCree, and had settled on something that was, in its own way, entirely true. “I am trying something new with some of our less socialized dragons.” 

“Feeding ‘em so much their legs can’t even touch the ground and all they can do is hiss at ya?” McCree asked, but he was smiling again, stifling that glimmer of brightness.

“Tomorrow morning, please,” Hanzo said, and grabbed the crate by the nearer handhold. It was light enough for him to carry it himself, since it was transported in a freezer and didn’t need the added weight of insulation to maintain its own temperature, but its size made it awkward for one person to carry alone. McCree dropped out of the truck before grabbing the other end to help bring it over to the main gate.

“Not givin’ me a lot of warning here,” McCree complained idly as they walked. “Ten good enough?”

“If you are actually here at ten,” Hanzo replied. McCree shot him a quick look, trying to see if the comment was made in jest, and Hanzo kept his face turned away, annoyed with himself and his lack of control. It was one thing to not like the man. It was another thing entirely to be an obvious jackass about it.

They stopped by the main gate, McCree crooning to the dragon who had followed them around the fence while Hanzo reentered his code to unlock again. He gave a short tug when McCree failed to notice they were moving again, too busy winding his fingers through the fence to rub at the dragon’s chin. He used his left hand almost exclusively to pet the dragons, Hanzo had long ago noticed. He assumed it had something to do with the glint of metal that showed at McCree’s wrist when his sleeve pulled up.

McCree took two steps inside the gate and put his half of the box down. He offered Hanzo a smile, bland and dull and false. “Ten it is, then,” he said, and tipped his hat to him, murmured a sweeter farewell to his scaly admirer, and headed back out the gate. Hanzo purposely turned towards the crate and ignored him, prying the lid off at the corner and peeking inside. Beef hearts, each one cut into quarters that were still bigger apiece than Hanzo’s fist, and stomachs and livers, all in the freezer recently enough that they had barely gotten cold. Treat food for dragons, loaded with nutrients they would get from catching and eating prey in the wild but not from eating the purely muscle-mass meat portions served at the sanctuary.

The dragon McCree had been flirting with plastered herself up against the fence with a loud chittering noise, claws woven into the chain links and eyes fixated on the crate. Her neighbors, close enough themselves to smell it, echoed her noises and her interest. Hanzo ignored them and sealed the lid again and leaned against the crate for a moment to think. He’d need to clean out the back of his car, lay the back seats down and put down a tarp or something. He also needed to check in with Morrison so he could get the day off tomorrow.

McCree started up his truck, the normally smooth purr of the hover-engine snarling loud and obnoxious as it cut into Hanzo’s planning, and Hanzo straightened up. He needed to get gloves and pass out the treats before he had a full-scale riot on his hands. The rest could wait.


	2. Chapter 2

He spent the night thinking and planning, and not doing a great deal of sleeping. He made tea and soup- even Hanzo’s steel-cast stomach turned sour at the thought of proper food after an afternoon spent watching dragons paint themselves red with cow viscera- and sat in his kitchen in silence as he turned things over and over in his head.

Noble dragons were like crocodiles, big and self-assured and the absolute top of the food chain. They grew to match their environment, long and whip-thin or bulky and powerful and always clever. They liked to lounge in sunbeams like cats and slept in open spaces with the confidence of an apex predator secure in their territory. They were a social species, forming friendships with creatures they would otherwise eat and sparing their lives in what could only be taken as a gesture of compassion. They were the closest thing to a second sentient species evolution had managed to produce without science helping it along.

They absolutely could not live in a barn.

He sipped at his tea as he considered the logistics of getting them moved- no idea where, but one step at a time- and listened to the muffled thumps and bangs coming from the detached garage behind his house, where Efi had set up her workshop. If he listened closely, he could almost hear her talking and another voice responding. It wasn’t the first time he had heard that in recent days. He ignored it, and tried not to think about what trouble an unsupervised robotics genius could get into.

* * *

Nine thirty the following morning found Hanzo sitting in his car in the shelter’s parking lot, early as he always was. He was mostly just dozing, having stayed up late in the name of research on noble dragons. He’d forced himself to disconnect and go to bed at two thirty, when he had abruptly realized he was watching a vid of a capybara cuddling with a caiman. He couldn’t risk going inside or, worse, out to the dragon pens- if they saw him, they would expect him to be in for the day, and he was unforgivably late. Outright absence they couldn’t care less about, but late two days in a row? They would be punishing him for weeks.

He startled into awareness at the sound of a familiar engine and lifted his head from the headrest in time to see McCree’s truck coming up the last curve on the long drive. It pulled a tight hairpin turn into the parking lot when McCree spotted Hanzo getting out of his car and pulled into the spot beside him.

“Should’ve figured you’d beat me here no matter how early I was,” McCree said through the open window as he killed his engine. “Least this time I’m not late.”

Hanzo was still running on too little sleep and too much caffeine to risk responding to that. He didn’t need McCree actively hating him, especially since he was going to be asking a lot of favors from the man in the immediate future. He nodded a greeting instead as he circled around to the tailgate of his car, unlocking and opening it up. It earned him a strange look from McCree, so he explained, “It is best if they only see me. They could be overwhelmed by too many people.”

“Right,” McCree said. “Need to borrow a gravcart, then? Cows ain’t light, ya know.”

“Yes, please,” Hanzo said, pressing his thumb against the bridge of his nose. He was tired, but that was no excuse. “I will return it tomorrow.”

McCree rapped his knuckles once against the side of his truck, producing a sharp metallic clang. “Don’t fuss yourself,” he said as he moved away. “Gotta do what’s best for the beasties, right?”

Hanzo stood back as McCree dragged a gravcart out of one of the side compartments on the truck and took it with him into the freezer in back. There was noises, thumps and sliding and the whir of an engine powering up, then McCree reappeared, pushing the gravcart ahead of him. It floated low to the ground of the freezer, loaded down with two long, bulky objects wrapped in stained tarpcloth.

“One cow, two halves, as ordered,” he said. He sat on the tail of the truck, letting his legs dangle as he fiddled with the gravcart’s controller. The cart hovered forward, dropping a little in altitude to be on level with Hanzo’s car.

Hanzo accepted the cart’s controller from McCree’s offering hand, and then stood there, feeling awkward. “I should thank you,” he said, and fought back a cringe. _I should_ , not just _thank you_. His mother, who had so struggled to teach a short-tempered young boy his manners, would be appalled.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” McCree said, tone amiable with a bite underneath. He tipped his head down, his hat shading his eyes, and stared at Hanzo for a moment. “You all right there? You’re lookin’ tired.”

“I’m fine,” Hanzo said unthinkingly, then corrected himself. “I did not sleep well last night. I was on YouTube.”

Something in McCree’s face softened a little, his expression becoming a little more genuinely friendly. “Went down the rabbit hole, huh?” he asked sympathetically.

“Yes,” Hanzo admitted, because it was true. He gestured with the gravcart controller. “So. Thank you.”

McCree, thankfully, didn’t seem to feel the need to drag it out further than that. He smiled, tipped his hat, and eased off the truck’s tailgate so he could close the freezer doors. “See you tomorrow then,” he said as he passed Hanzo, walking over to the driver’s door.

Hanzo clutched at the controller, forcing himself to look at it, to study it and figure out the controls. By the time he had the gravcart positioned and hovering at just the right altitude to slide right into the back of his car, McCree was long gone.

* * *

He didn’t want to load the address into the GPS- old habits die hard, and paranoia was an old habit indeed- so Hanzo spent the better part of two hours driving around the rat’s nest of meandering back roads, searching for the house and despairing of roads that took a straight line from point A to point B. He found it eventually, after sitting on the side of the road for ten minutes staring at the maps on his phone while he compared street names and landmarks to the memory of his one previous drive there, and pulled up the long driveway to the farmhouse two hours and eight dead-ends after leaving the sanctuary.

Efi was waiting for him outside the barn, struggling and failing to contain a nervous grin. She trotted over to the car as he got out, looking nervy and ready to bolt. It was different enough from the self-assured genius he was used to that he simply closed the door and leaned back against the car, trying to seem less physically imposing. “What is it?” he asked.

“I, um.” Efi started to point back towards the barn, hesitated, then visibly scraped her courage together. “I said I was working on something that could help us, and I finished. She’s in the barn.”

“She,” Hanzo echoed flatly, and Efi nodded, eyes shining with nervous excitement. He had left a robotics genius unsupervised, after all, and it appeared she had done what robotics geniuses did best. He headed over to the door, Efi all but vibrating at his side, and stepped inside after a moment’s pause to gather himself.

He saw the dragons first, of course. They had relaxed from their tension-tight knot in the corner and were draped around their half of the barn and over each other. The blue-maned one had stayed back while its sibling was pressed close enough to the barrier that it was visible, a constant shimmery static hanging in the air like the dragon’s half of the barn was experiencing a bad connection. Then he saw what the gold dragon was so interested in.

_Big_ , was his first real impression of it- her? She, Efi had said. He had been expecting something more like the basic humanoid omnic shape. Instead he was greeted with something more like a robotic centaur, tall and bulky and surprisingly armored, four strong legs and horns curving from her face. For a moment Hanzo felt the icy numbness that came with a horrible realization- he had let Efi build a _battle bot_ in his garage, he was going to be single-handedly responsible for the second Omnic uprising- but then she shifted, and the sensor lights shining behind her eyes changed shape.

She was smiling, Hanzo realized, and then on the heels of that, she was smiling with her eyes like an emoticon. Efi had given her battle bot an emoji face.

“Hello, Mister Shimada,” she said, and she actually waved a hand at them. “I am Orisa.”

He did not stutter- he was too controlled for that- but it did take him a few seconds and a couple false starts to find a response. “Hello, Orisa. Please call me Hanzo.” He forced himself to stop staring, looking instead to Efi. “You built her in my garage?” he asked.

“Yes,” Efi said, still nervous but getting braver since Hanzo was clearly not reacting badly to the surprise battle bot. He was busy imagining how she’d gotten her through the small doors out of the garage and into the barn, and how she’d gotten here- had she rode Orisa like a horse? The omnic was certainly big enough to carry a scrawny eleven-year-old. “She’s based off of the OR15 line used to defend the city of Numbani.”

Orisa moved with the quiet whisper of metal through the air and the _clomp_ of hoof-like feet on the floor of the barn. When Hanzo looked back at her, she settled back on her hind legs, almost like a cat sitting down. She looked back at him, patient and expectant.

An idea crept in, slow and steady. Hanzo glanced back at Efi.

“Did you build more of the barrier generators?” he asked, and she nodded, so he turned back to Orisa. The first thing he had learned about omnics: _creator_ did not mean _master_. “What are your defensive capacities?”

“I can produce a stationary barrier to protect others and I can emit a short-range particle barrier to fortify myself,” she said.

Hanzo nodded thoughtfully at that, gazing past Orisa. “Do you think your defenses will hold against them?” he asked, and Orisa pivoted her torso to regard the dragons beyond the barrier. The gold one had followed her over and was still pressed against the barrier, its mane crawling with static electricity. Its sibling had gotten braver and approached as well, close enough now to lunge and bite, if it felt threatened.

As intimidating as they looked, though, there was not a lot of strength in those jaws. A dragon’s greatest weapon was its sharp mind, not its bite power.

“Yes,” Orisa said, simple enough, and Hanzo had no reason to doubt her. He looked to Efi again, because the second thing he had learned about omnics: _creator_ did not mean _master_ , but it did mean something very close to _parent_. She was biting at her lower lip, but she nodded in agreement.

“I have food for them in my car,” he said, nodding towards the dragons. “We are going to feed them and give them more space, and they are going to meet Orisa. And we will go from there.”

* * *

Orisa did most of the heavy lifting in rearranging the cow carcass, while Hanzo and Efi lined up two sets of generators and attached them to the wall, creating a sort of holding area just in case. Efi also produced a couple of small metal capsules that blinked blue lights at them.

“It causes interference when it comes in contact with the barrier,” Efi explained as Hanzo took his. “Like a hiccup. There should be enough time for us to get through, but,” and she glanced at the dragons. Hanzo had estimated them to be about forty feet in length each. “Orisa has her own built in, so she can activate it when she needs to,” she added.

Hanzo accepted the capsule with a nod and tucked it into his pocket. “The most important thing to remember is not to panic,” he said to both of them. Orisa had unwrapped the carcass and was folding the tarpcloth to set it aside with almost fussy fastidiousness, but she turned to look back at him as he spoke. “If you run, they will chase you,” he continued, and he ended it there, although the next part was obvious. They would chase, they would catch, they would most likely devour. They were predators, after all.

Orisa moved back so she was between the two new barriers, in the little holding area. She braced herself, each foot planted with purpose, and turned one hand to gesture just so, and the air stirred with sudden life as the generators powered up. The dragons stirred as well, four keen eyes locked on the two cow halves, bodies coiling with preparation. Hanzo considered telling Efi to leave, that she did not want to see this, then decided not to. So long as Orisa was in there, Efi wasn’t leaving.

“Lowering barrier,” Orisa announced, and gestured again, and the original barrier dropped.

It took a moment or three. Then the gold dragon pressed its nose to where the barrier once was, realized it was gone, and instantly ripped into the nearer cow half with a furious snarl, its sibling only seconds behind. Efi cringed at the noise, turned away and, to Hanzo’s surprise, caught his nearer hand with one of hers. But she did not run.

When the eating was done, the blue-eyed dragon retreated to wash its whiskers. The gold dragon hesitated, lingering in the new space, investigating the barrier and Orisa beyond it. Its sibling watched, not approaching but wary now instead of openly hostile.

“Talk to them,” Hanzo said quietly. The gold dragon pricked up its small ears and swayed its head to the side to see him around the bulwark of Orisa. It had seen him bring the gravcart in, it was smart enough to know he had some part in providing its meal. 

“Hello, Dragon, I am Orisa,” she said, giving the exact same wave of the hand she had given Hanzo when they first met. She had sense enough to modulate her voice to a soft croon, at least. Both dragons snapped their heads around to watch the motion of her hand, and Orisa faltered. She was still young and inexperienced, and dragons were probably not something Efi had thought to prepare her for.

They had connected a hose to the spigot on the house, since the barn’s water supply was suspect, and had left it lying in Orisa’s reach within the barrier. She picked it up and looked back at the dragons. They gave her nothing, their expressions even more rigidly immobile than hers. 

“I am going to give you more water, and I ask you do not attempt to attack me,” she told them, and it wasn’t nearly what Hanzo had meant when he said _talk to them_ , but it seemed to work for her. “Lowering barrier,” she stated, and there was a faint flicker in the air, and then nothing between her and the dragons.

Efi’s grip tightened on Hanzo’s hand until the bones ground together. 

Orisa moved slowly, walking at half speed past the gold dragon, who twisted sharply when it realized they were on the same side of the barrier now. It snaked its head forward and stopped inches away from Orisa’s face, staring her down in open curiosity. Its jaws lolled open, neck twisting so it could bite at her-

Orisa thumped a fist against the dragon’s snout with a firm, “ _No_ ,” and the dragon recoiled with a surprised snort. “We do not bite,” she told it, and it tucked its head further back and wrinkled its nose and snorted again, all but crossing its eyes in an attempt to look at the offended area. The blue dragon shifted, moving out of Orisa’s way as she approached the horse trough in the back corner but never taking its eyes off her. She ignored them both and turned the nozzle on the hose, activating the flow of water.

Efi made a noise under her breath, slightly hysterical, and relaxed her hold on Hanzo’s hand enough that he could slip away. He moved over to the barrier, towards the chastised dragon, and clucked his tongue to draw its attention. The dragon snorted and looked away, and Hanzo smiled despite himself. Big, yes, but young, and mannerless because of it. Shocked and offended by the mild punishment like a child sent to time-out for the first time ever.

The sound of rushing water shut off abruptly, and Orisa appeared around a coil of dragon a moment later. She approached the barrier, watching the gold dragon carefully, and stepped across when it showed no indication of following. The barrier flickered for a moment, curving and arching away from Orisa like a curtain of water flowing around a disruption, and then snapped back into place once she was through.

“They have fresh water,” she told Hanzo rather unnecessarily, lowering herself into her awkward sit so she could drop the hose gently. Efi took advantage and climbed straight up Orisa, wrapping her arms as far as they would go around the Orisa’s neck and whispering rapid-fire words in a language Hanzo had only a passing familiarity with.

Hanzo looked back at the dragons, and it took every ounce of self-control for him not to jump- the blue dragon had approached, silent as a whisper, its face feet away from him. It stared at him for several long seconds before it turned away, leaving Hanzo feeling as though he had been issued a test and wondering if he had passed it.

“Now what?” Efi asked. She was standing on Orisa’s back, leaning against the omnic’s upper torso with her chin propped on her shoulder. 

“We give them time,” Hanzo said, turning away from the barrier. He was distracted, mind racing ahead. It was Saturday in three days, and he got Saturdays off, so he could request McCree deliver another cow then. It would give the dragons enough time to adjust to their new normal, and be ready to expand again, and if Orisa went in and spent time inside the barrier with them every day… If they got the freedom of outside the barn, it would be hard to rein them back in, but the ultimate goal was to get them out of there entirely. They would have to leave eventually.

“Do you mind staying here with them?” he asked, glancing at the omnic, who tilted her head at him and did her emoji smile.

“I do not,” she said.

“Are you leaving?” Efi asked. She would have to hitch a ride back with Hanzo if Orisa was staying, he supposed, so of course she didn’t want to leave yet. And, if he were being honest, Hanzo didn’t want to go either. He looked back at the dragons, no longer a tight knot of tension or a solid unyielding wall of scales, but looped in loose relaxed coils around their half of the barn. So much progress for such little effort.

“No,” he decided. “Not yet. I can stay a while.”

Her smile alone made it worth it.


	3. Chapter 3

As expected, the dragons at the sanctuary forgave Hanzo his absence easily enough. They seemed a bit wary of him, sniffing the air around him and pulling away, studying him with unblinking lizard stares. They smelled the big dragons on him. Hanzo sleepwalked his way through two days’ of work, his hands doing their business as years of repetition had programmed them to, his mind miles away. He only focused on the present on the second day, Friday, when the dragons filled the air with their eerie bone-rattle racket and a familiar engine revved in the distance.

He met McCree at the main gate again. The man dipped his chin at him and cooed at the dragon nearest him, as always, and for the first time Hanzo felt something stir at the discrepancy in greetings. Not envy, but something more melancholic.

“So how’d your little experiment go?” McCree asked. He wasn’t quite looking at Hanzo, his face turned towards the dragon and his gaze flicking over to catch quick glimpses of Hanzo out of the corner of his eye.

“It went well,” Hanzo said. “I would like to try it again tomorrow, if you can.”

McCree dropped the act and turned towards Hanzo completely, his expression bland and his eyes sharp. “You don’t work tomorrow,” he pointed out. He sounded cool, almost, and Hanzo wondered at what had changed.

“What’s for the beasties, as you said,” Hanzo replied, and McCree snorted at that, turning his face away and bringing a hand up as if to wipe away the smile Hanzo’s words had startled into appearance.

“Right,” he agreed, looking back down at his scaly friend. “Same time good?”

The dragon cooed in a credible imitation of McCree’s greetings towards her and leaned into the hand he put against the fence, annoyed at the denial of her scritchings. “Yes, please,” he said, and McCree nodded once.

“See you tomorrow, then,” he said, and turned and walked away, leaving the dragon and Hanzo both staring after him in disgruntlement, each wondering what they had done wrong.

* * *

“... and the generators on the other side attract the pulse so it arches into a dome,” Efi said, swinging her arm up and over her head in a dramatic demonstration. “And they emit their own as well, so it’s stronger at the base than at the top, which I didn’t think mattered because they can’t really jump, can they?” She concluded her lecture on a question, turning on the spot to look at Hanzo. He had listened to every word, even the sloggy bits in the middle where Orisa asked questions and Efi got extremely technical in her responses. He was a capable engineer, certainly better than the average person, but Efi had left him in the dust.

“No,” he said after a moment. The lesser dragons were decent jumpers, but the big dragons had too much body and not enough leg for anything like that. There was a _but_ , of course, but he kept that bit to himself for now. He would need a second opinion before he made any sort of decisions about that.

“So yes?” Efi asked, bouncing on her heels with excitement.

“If we let them come outside, they will not want to go back in,” Hanzo warned. Orisa could manhandle them, she had already proven that much to the satisfaction of all parties, but there were two of them and one of her.

“There’s no one close enough to see them,” Efi pointed out, gesturing to the tree line that provided a wind break for the house and barn.

Hanzo looked towards the open barn doors and the gold-maned face pressed as close as it could get, nostrils flaring as they drew in the scent of fresh air. They had given the dragons more space with every day, and now they had full run of the entire barn. They had even risked a little human contact, Hanzo daring to venture past the barrier with Orisa hovering a step behind him. His palms still itched with the feeling of warm scales under them.

“For a little while,” he said, and had to raise his voice over Efi’s cheering. “A couple of hours and no more, understand? This area is not secure enough, anyone could wander in from the road.”

“I left the generators around back inactive, so I’m going to go turn them on and then we can drop the inner barrier,” Efi told him, apparently not hearing a word he had said. She took off running before Hanzo could even realize that she’d prepared for this and had fully expected him to give in, leaving him standing in her wake with a dawning sensation of being used.

Orisa looked at him as he groaned, and he looked back at her, watching her for a moment. “I brought another cow,” he said eventually, and gestured towards the barn and the face- face and a half, really, he could see a second snout poking around the corner- framed in the doorway. “Will you stay here and keep an eye on them?”

“Of course, Mister Hanzo,” she replied genially, and Hanzo sighed again but let it be. They’d had that discussion twice already, and it only served to distress Orisa, who couldn’t seem to grasp what she was doing wrong. 

He set out towards the house, heading back towards the house to where he’d parked his car in the driveway. He didn’t care for the whole setup- it was too open, too accessible, especially now that Efi was apparently going to be campaigning for the dragons to be allowed outside. There wasn’t even a good place for him to leave his car that wouldn't be visible to anyone driving by. To make matters worse, the barrier generators needed a certain ratio of distance between each one, so the dome was either going to be massive enough to contain the house and a good portion of the surrounding field or so small it barely covered the barn. Knowing Efi, it was likely the former, and that just turned the whole thing into a logistical nightmare, and he should have told her no, he should be calling this whole thing off right now.

He was so deep in his thoughts, so focused on figuring out all the ways it could go wrong, that he didn’t even notice there was someone leaning against his car until they spoke when he was only a few steps away.

“So,” they said, and Hanzo startled badly, instinctively twisting back into a ready pose that would allow him to strike out or flee. “This’s where you been sneakin’ off to?”

McCree, Hanzo realized, his blood still running cold with the shock. Legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankle, arms folded over his chest, in no way prepared to physically attack. Hanzo straightened up a bit. 

“You cannot be here,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder to the barn, which was was set at an angle to the house- hard to see through the barn door from there, but the barn’s occupants could see them, and Hanzo pictured in his mind that snout poking around the corner at just the perfect angle. The dragon had been growling, he realized belatedly, so low it was a tickle in his chest as it echoed through his bones, growling because it had noticed the intruder.

The house would be almost dead center of the barrier dome. McCree was saying something but Hanzo ignored him, scouting the field beyond the house for the generators, trying to determine which way was shorter. They had gotten so careless, the dragons never tried to rush the barrier when it was expanding so they’d stopped putting up the buffer.

“Barrier on,” Efi yelled from somewhere behind the barn, and McCree straightened up and pushed off the car and took two steps towards Hanzo, not talking, tense with the realization that something very bad was happening.

The air beyond the house crackled with static, and the subsonic growling from the barn reached an audible peak. Hanzo didn’t need to look. McCree’s eyes went wide and the color drained from his face in half a second, and he knew. “ _Orisa_!” he bellowed, grabbing for McCree’s arm and pushing him away and twisting back to look because he couldn’t _not_.

The blue dragon threaded the doorway like the eye of a needle, the long blue ribbon of its body unspooling, its open jaws leading the way and dominating Hanzo’s sight. He staggered, tripped and stumbled, fell against his car. McCree said something as he scrambled back, keeping his footing but hitting the car as well. The dragon screeched like a tea kettle and snapped its teeth and lunged towards them-

\- and ran into something big and glowing blue.

Orisa planted all four feet and leaned into the barrier she was emitting, breaking the dragon’s charge. It screeched again, the front half of its body carried by the initial momentum to pile up against the barrier, back claws digging into the ground furiously to stop itself from completely wiping out. It stayed there a moment, stunned, before pulling its head free of the dragonpile and snaking it around to fix its gaze on McCree and hiss furiously.

Hanzo looked at McCree, face pale and eyes wide and metal fingers digging dents into the car door he was pressed against.

“Open the trunk and take one out,” he said, and when the other man didn’t seem to hear him, he jabbed a fist into McCree’s knee, which buckled and nearly dumped him on his ass. “Open the trunk,” he repeated when McCree finally looked at him. Then he pushed himself to his feet and away from the car, daring to approach the dragon.

“Be calm,” he said when the dragon snapped its head around to snarl at him. It made no move towards him but he stayed close to Orisa all the same, behind the barrier she was still keeping up. “He means no harm. McCree-”

“Trunk, yeah,” McCree said, and the dragon looked back to him as he started moving. Hanzo spoke to it again, nonsense words in a calm tone, listening as McCree fumbled the trunk open and pulled the tarpcloth off its contents. He looked back to see McCree pulling one half of the cow carcass out of the car one-handed, dragging it a few feet away from the car before letting go of it and retreating.

The dragon had been unwinding itself slowly, backing away from the barrier and straightening itself out, but it stopped all motion at the sight of the carcass. It stared at McCree until he was a comfortable distance away, then pushed its nose towards the offering and sniffed at it.

Hanzo laid one hand on Orisa’s arm, drawing her attention. “Get Efi and get beyond the barrier,” he ordered quietly, and Orisa dipped her head in a nod and powered down the barrier. Then Hanzo turned, carefully not to turn away from the dragon, and headed after McCree.

* * *

“God damn,” McCree said, as Hanzo was catching up to him. He snatched his hat off his head and fisted his flesh-and-blood hand into his hair, spun on his heel to face Hanzo while still walking backwards. “You-” he began, interrupted himself with a brief burst of Spanish, and tried again. “What the _hell_?”

“Did you follow me here?” Hanzo countered. He had had enough time on the walk over here to get himself good and mad over all the things implied by McCree’s presence.

“Of course I did! Saw you drivin’ around the other day, doing an experiment my ass- figured I’d see what you were up to- but how the hell is this _my_ fault? You got a giant-ass _killer dragon_ hiding out here!” McCree waved the hand holding his hat out to indicate the barn. He was sliding out of shocked and hysterical and into properly mad himself, so Hanzo braced himself for a fight. This one could get very bad.

“The giant-ass killer dragon would not have bothered you if you hadn’t followed me,” he snarled.

“So it is my fault,” McCree said sarcastically. “Not yours, for lyin’ and hidin’ a dragon, but mine, for gettin’ curious. You are just-” and he bit off his words, sucking in a breath through gritted teeth and jamming his hat back down on his head. He spun around again, using his longer legs to put more distance between them, and Hanzo let him go.

Ten strides later, he walked straight into the barrier dome.

“We are taking precautions,” Hanzo said once McCree was done checking his nose for bleeding and bending his hat back into shape. “If you had not tried to be so dramatic about it, and had simply approached me and asked-”

“You would’ve lied,” McCree cut in.

“I have not lied to you,” Hanzo said stiffly, and McCree barked out a laugh.

“Well, sweetheart, you may not be lyin’, but you sure as shit ain’t tellin’ me the truth either,” he said. He reached out one hand and put it against the barrier, testing it.

Hanzo stepped forward and grabbed McCree’s elbow and dipped his other hand into his pocket, triggering the barrier interrupter Efi had given him, and pushed them both through while the barrier hiccuped around them. McCree shook him off, although he waited until they were several steps clear of the barrier to do so.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he began, in a _but I know I’m not_ tone, “but ain’t those big dragons illegal here?”

There was no Efi here to bat her eyes and cry over the poor young dragons being put down, only Hanzo and his frayed temper and his simmering self-contempt over his having let a rancher get the better of him. He tightened his hands into fists until his nails bit at his palms and drew blood.

“You are not wrong,” he said simply, and left it there. McCree snorted at him.

“So why the hell,” he snapped, then rerouted. “You act all high and mighty, like this’s all my fault, and you’re the one breakin’ the law.”

“My choice to make,” Hanzo said. “I did not think these creatures deserving of death just because of what they are.”

“You weren’t think’ about anything ‘cept provin’ you’re a master dragon wrangler,” McCree bit back, and Hanzo saw red, but the idiot wasn’t done yet. “Always gotta prove you’re better than anyone, and lookie here, you got big dragons you can control and no one else-”

He wasn’t aware he was moving forward until his momentum reversed itself, and instead of planting a fist in McCree’s face, he was flying backwards. McCree was retreating too, his vitriol cut off mid-word with an unflattering squeak. Hanzo twisted, fighting instinctively against the hold that was pulling the collar of his shirt up uncomfortably tight against his throat, but all he got for his troubles was a brief shaking.

“We do not fight,” Orisa scolded them both, and Hanzo looked around, finally noticing his new position. She had picked both him and McCree up by their scruffs, like they were misbehaving puppies, and was physically holding them apart from each other.

“The hell is this?” McCree demanded.

“This is Orisa, and you will be nice to her,” Efi said sternly from somewhere on McCree’s side.

“My apologies,” Hanzo said stiffly. “Please put me down.”

His feet touched the ground a moment later, and he moved away, pulling at his shirt to smooth it down. He could hear McCree doing the same on Orisa’s other side, only he stopped and stumbled on a swear, editing himself when he remembered there was a child around.

“And lookit that, we got company,” he said, and Hanzo looked back. The gold dragon was close, lying along the barrier with ears pricked forward and eyes studying them all intently.

“Your yelling was upsetting him,” Efi said accusingly.

“Almost gettin’ eaten upset me,” McCree countered, but the acid in his tone was absent now. Hanzo circled around Orisa’s bulk so he could at least see the other man, who was still focused on the dragon. “How many of them do you got here?”

“Two,” Efi said. “They’re just babies, Hanzo said. My age.” And there went the eyes, big and hopeful and shining with potential tears.

McCree looked at her, then glanced over at Hanzo. He turned back to the dragon and dipped his head in that familiar way that shaded his eyes with the brim of his hat. “So when you said they don’t deserve death. They’re just gonna kill ‘em?”

“Yes,” Hanzo said simply. “Much easier than trying to relocate them.”

McCree said nothing else, just looked at the dragon for a long moment. Then he turned away, slow and graceful and not at all alarming to worried dragons. “My truck might be on the wrong side of the barrier,” he said to no one in particular.

“Okay,” Efi replied, trotting after him. “Orisa can help you get it out, she’s got a barrier disruptor and its field is big enough for your truck to get through.” Orisa turned as well, sensing she was being summoned, and followed them, leaving Hanzo alone with the dragon. He reached out as if to touch it, and saw that his hands were shaking. He closed his eyes and saw shining white teeth coming at him. He opened his eyes again and focused on his breathing until it was steady.

Beyond the barrier, the dragon huffed at him, whiskers flicking forward before lying back again, curious and a little bit worried. It had its chin resting on the ground, putting it below eye-level with Hanzo, a change from the normal altitude its long neck afforded it. Hanzo tried a smile and pressed his hand to the barrier again, no longer shaking.

“I am all right,” he told it. It huffed again, but the large head stayed on the ground, the long body draped along the curve of the barrier. In the distance was the sound of an engine starting up. Hanzo looked over, although he could see nothing, and listened to the sound fade away.

He stayed with the dragon for a long time, neither one moving, until the sky darkened and it was time to go home.


	4. Chapter 4

Sunday dawned grey and muggy, the air close and heavy with humidity. Hanzo was slow to rise, fighting a headache caused partially by the weather change and partially by the now-empty bottle of sake sitting on the kitchen counter. He made tea that went cold and had to swallow back bile at the thought of eating anything. He sat at his kitchen table and dry-swallowed some aspirin and studied the curls of steam rising off the untouched cup of tea and tried to think.

McCree hadn’t immediately called animal control, so they had that much to be thankful for. But that was no guarantee that he hadn’t called someone else, someone who might be a little slower in responding- there were collectors who would pay dearly for a noble dragon, for trophies they could mount on their walls and scaled hides they could wear. There were people out there who thought ingesting the flesh of a noble dragon gave immortality, eternal youth, stamina in bed. It was all nonsense, of course, but those sort of beliefs always persisted despite all proof to the contrary.

The problem was, if it became necessary, where to move them? They were big and pushy and arrogant, and they needed space, and even with Efi’s barrier dome and Orisa to ride herd on them there were only so many places they could be safely contained. Add to that their natures- the gold dragon was friendly enough, but its sibling was withdrawn and wary and still prone to lashing out, as the day before had shown. Hanzo wouldn’t trust either one of them around a human yet, not without Orisa there just in case.

He was making a second batch of tea, sternly telling himself that he was actually going to drink this one, when the knock came at his front door. Efi, no doubt. She had been quietly panicking the whole time yesterday after McCree had left. Hanzo was surprised it had taken her this long to be after him.

Expecting that, it was a shock when he opened the door and found his gaze, angled down to Efi’s height, met with plaid flannel and a gaudy gold belt buckle.

“Mornin’,” McCree said, and Hanzo blinked and looked up. He had forgone the hat, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, affording Hanzo his first real look at the man’s prosthetic arm. He looked, but didn’t stare, and met McCree’s gaze without flinching.

“What do you want?” he asked, tired and not trying to hide it. He was not proud of how close he had come to losing his temper the day before- forget losing it, he had lost it entirely, and would have broken his fists on McCree’s face if Orisa hadn’t intervened.

“Wanted to talk to you,” McCree replied, and flicked his gaze over Hanzo, over the shirt he had slept in and the mess of his hair that he had not yet bothered to brush or tie back. “Maybe show you somethin’, if you’re feelin’ up for it.”

Hanzo considered him for a long moment, then stepped aside and held the door open, a clear invitation. “Come in before Efi sees you,” he said, and turned and walked away.

He’d left the water on to boil, and it was whistling up a storm, so he headed back into the kitchen to remove it from the heat. McCree followed a moment later. His footsteps sounded oddly quiet on the hard tile floor, and Hanzo glanced back at him and immediately looked away, feeling oddly touched that the man had taken his boots off and left them in the doorway.

“Tea?” he offered, holding up the kettle. McCree drifted closer to the kitchen table and looked down at the still-full cup sitting there, stone cold by then.

“Don’t seem impressed with it yourself,” he said, and Hanzo stared at him until he offered a weak smile and translated. “No, thanks.”

Hanzo grunted an acknowledgement and set the kettle aside and leaned back against the counter, arms folded defensively across his chest. “You wished to talk,” he said.

“Yeah,” McCree said. He hooked his thumbs, flesh and metal both, in the belt loops on his jeans and kicked at the ground with his heel in a gesture that probably would have jangled the spur had he been wearing his boots. Finally he looked back at Hanzo and said, “For the record, I still think you’re crazy, keepin’ those monsters.”

Hanzo said nothing. There was nothing to say; he mostly agreed with that assessment.

“But I been readin’ up,” McCree continued. “And you were right. They’d kill ‘em. And your friend- Efi?- she said somethin’ yesterday, about them just bein’ kids, or whatever you call baby dragons.”

“They are adolescents,” Hanzo said. “Where I come from, those are called _teenagers_.”

That got him a dark look, and Hanzo relented with shrug. McCree had dark circles smudged under his eyes and exhaustion carved onto the lines of his face, like he really had spent all night staring at a screen and not sleeping. The least Hanzo could do was not be snippy about it.

“So I been thinkin’,” McCree continued. He drew his flesh hand over his face, dragging his fingers across his untrimmed beard, gritted his teeth and frowned unhappily, visibly at war with himself. Then he scoffed and smiled and shook his head. “I got somethin’ to show you,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder to indicate outside. Hanzo pushed himself off the counter.

“Give me five minutes,” he said, and pushed past McCree without waiting for agreement, heading to his bedroom to get changed and ready himself for whatever this was.

* * *

The car ride was unnaturally long and tensely silent. McCree kept his gaze on the road with a focus that was almost absurd, considering they passed three other cars at most, and Hanzo watched the scenery outside melt from suburban neighborhoods to grassy fields to rolling hills as they headed out of the city. If he focused his eyes just so, he could see McCree in the reflection in the window, jaw set and gaze unflinching from the road ahead of them, making a point of not looking at Hanzo at all.

He pulled onto a small side road eventually, and then onto an even smaller one, then turned through a set of wrought iron gates and drove down what he might consider a driveway and what Hanzo called a dirt-packed trail. He peeled off it when they were halfway to what had to be his own house, zooming over the grass instead as they cut across the yard. The fields were lined by fences and Hanzo caught glimpses of large black bodies moving within them. It wasn’t late enough in the day for them to seek the cool shelter of tree-shade or a pond yet, so the cattle were scattered across the paddock, noses down in the grass as they grazed. One or two heads raised as the car hovered past them, but McCree didn’t stop and they were quickly left behind.

They stopped near a building at the crest of a hill a ways away from the main body of the ranch, well away from any of the open fields the cattle were in. The building was long and low and looked well-kept but old, aluminum-plated roof with corrosion eating at its eaves and cinder block walls that had been patched in so many places the original walls themselves were all but covered. One of the double doors had sagged on broken hinges and was propped against the ground to keep it closed, chains and a rusty deadbolt looped around the handles to keep intruders out.

“So your friend was talkin’,” McCree said as he shut the engine down and climbed out of the car, Hanzo joining him. “Told me a little bit ‘bout that barrier of hers. She made that herself?” he asked, finally looking at Hanzo directly.

“That, yes, and Orisa,” Hanzo said, and McCree whistled.

“When I was her age I was shootin’ tin cans off fence railings and feelin’ clever for figurin’ out how to reload with one hand,” he said, eyes gone wistful, but he shook it off a moment later. “Anyway, she told me about that barrier, and it got me thinkin’.” He took the padlock in his left hand, twisted and yanked and it snapped clean off, the chain spooling down and dropping at his feet. He pulled open the door without the broken hinges and stepped back, letting the cloudy gloom light up what it could of the interior.

Hanzo stepped forward to peer around the closed door. It was a stables, he realized, a string of stalls running down either wall.

“The previous owner sealed this up when they built the new one,” McCree said, gesturing down the hill towards the stables nearer the house. “It ain’t much, but it’s bigger than that tin can your beasts are stuffed into, and with that barrier you can let ‘em have run of the field day and night.” He looked at Hanzo, leaning into the edge of the door, bracing his hip and shoulder against it, watching as Hanzo realized what was on offer.

He looked back at the fields around them- completely empty, no cows to kill or fences to trample- and at the building again- low roof but sturdy walls, enough room in the center aisle for a big dragon to stretch out long or twist itself into a pretzel. They were in the far corner of the ranch grounds, so the field was bordered on two sides by tall rows of trees that had once been a windbreak and had since overgrown into a proper forest. There would be food and fresh water and, above all, seclusion.

He turned to face McCree, unable to find the words to thank him, unable to fight down his own selfish relief enough to object.

“It ain’t permanent, obviously, but what you got ain’t permanent either,” McCree said. “And you can’t keep ‘em where they are, you gotta know that.”

“This is illegal,” Hanzo said, fighting the words as he said them but needing them to be said. He and Efi had made their choices knowingly but he couldn’t drag someone else into this by way of Efi’s guilt trip. “If we are discovered, and we almost certainly will be-”

“Not the first time I’ve been arrested, doubt it’ll be the last,” McCree cut in carelessly. He didn’t elaborate, merely closed his mouth after those words were out and watched Hanzo for a response.

It had been his first thought, when he started seriously considering it- the barn wasn’t big enough for them, they couldn’t stay there long.

“How would we move them?” he asked finally, and McCree gave him a sharp grin.

“Got a place I can rent a truck and a livestock trailer from,” McCree said. “Won’t be big enough for both of ‘em at once, and it’s up to you to figure out how to get ‘em in and out.”

“Can you do it today? I have work tomorrow, and I cannot miss another day,” Hanzo warned, and McCree shrugged.

“You just worry about the dragons,” he said. “I’ll drop you off at home, meet you at the barn in three hours. I’ll even be on time.” He added the last part with a smile that probably meant something more, but Hanzo didn’t catch it, didn’t understand.

“All right,” he said instead, and hesitated, a thought occurring to him. It might work- it was worth a try, if nothing else. “But first, I have to stop at the store for something.”

“Sure thing,” McCree agreed amiably enough, and pushed off from the door. “Let’s get it movin’, then.”

* * *

“So he’s just decided to help us,” Efi said. “Because he felt bad?”

“Out of the goodness of his heart,” Hanzo replied. He was focused on unwinding the paper wrapper around the biggest bar of ultra-dark chocolate the store had, trying not to look at Efi. It was easier for her to accept than an endless refrain of _I don’t know, I don’t understand it myself_ , which was the only truth Hanzo had to offer.

“I don’t like it,” Efi said with a surprising amount of cynicism, her face twisted into a stern frown. “You said he followed you here yesterday?”

“He must have,” Hanzo agreed. He hadn’t asked. He hadn’t wanted to start up the argument again by prodding at known sore points.

“And now he’s being nice,” Efi argued. “After Bunny nearly ate him.”

“After- what?” Hanzo asked, stopping in his tracks and turning to frown down at her. To his surprise, Efi blushed and looked away, unable or unwilling to meet his gaze. “Bunny?” he echoed, just to be sure he’d heard it right.

“I couldn’t just keep calling them _the dragons_ ,” she told her shoes.

It was to be expected, really- she was a child, after all, and children got sentimental about those things. “What is the other one’s name, then? And why Bunny?” he asked. He started walking again, trying to ease her embarrassment by leaving the moment behind.

“Frog,” she said. “And Bunny because blue is D.Va’s color.”

“Of course,” Hanzo agreed, as if that meant anything at all to him.

And then they were at the barn, and Efi took straight to Orisa to fill her in while Hanzo went over to the door. The gold dragon- Frog, he supposed- was loitering on the other side of the barrier, once again penned into the barn. Bunny’s nose was poking up over a nearby coil of dragon-body, whiskers twitching as Hanzo approached. They had liked being outside, Hanzo knew, and it wouldn’t be too long before they started actively objecting to this arrangement.

_You just worry about the dragons_ , McCree had said, as if he didn’t have the easier end of that bargain by far.

They were wrapped together again, neither one in a position to spring out unexpectedly, so Hanzo nodded to Orisa to lower the barrier and stepped forward once it was down. “Here,” he said, and tossed the entire bar of chocolate on the ground by Frog’s nose. Frog turned its head to look at it with one eye, sniffed at it, lowered its snout and gently licked at it with its pointed tongue. A moment’s consideration, and then the chocolate was gone, and Bunny was poking its head up to see what had its sibling purring so happily.

“They like it,” Efi said in a surprised tone Hanzo knew better than to take personally. He would doubt it as well, if the dragons at the sanctuary hadn’t taught him so well. 

“They do,” Hanzo agreed. The coils were moving, Frog drawing free of the tangle, golden eyes bright with interest and pinned on the plastic bag hanging on Hanzo’s arm. He stepped back again, brought the barrier back up and ignored the irritated snort from the other side. He was busy thinking about how they were going to manage this.

It would be best if Frog went first- it was less likely to panic at being in a new place without its sibling, and probably could be safely contained by the barrier for however long it would take to relocate the other dragon. Which meant Efi would have to go with Frog, to set up the barrier dome, and Orisa as well in case something went wrong. But that would put Bunny on edge, and Hanzo would need Orisa’s help to handle that, which would leave Efi alone on the ranch with nothing but the barrier to keep her safe from a potentially angry dragon.

Or Bunny could go first and have Orisa stay at the ranch, and Hanzo could gamble on Frog’s fondness for him.

“The barrier generators have been gathered?” he asked Orisa, who dipped her head in confirmation. He had had Efi contact her to have her do this while McCree had been driving him back to his house. Transporting them would also be a challenge, as they were bulky and heavy, not to mention setting them up at the ranch, where the area the dome covered would be almost twice as large.

One problem at a time, and besides, Hanzo’s focus needed to be on the dragons and the dragons alone. The barrier was Efi’s responsibility.

Bunny, face up close to the doorway now, snapped its head around sharply. Orisa perked up as well, and a minute later Hanzo heard it, the sound of a heavy engine churning as a vehicle approached. Not a hovercar, but an old-style ground-based vehicle, which probably provided better stability for hauling. A few moments later, and it was coming around the barn, tires flattening the grass as McCree pulled up and parked. The trailer was long enough to stuff a dragon into, give or take half a tail length, and wide enough for them to move around without feeling trapped, but not wide enough for them to do much damage if they thrashed.

McCree dropped out of the truck and ambled over, hesitating only half a second when he noticed Bunny staring at him. “Mornin’,” he said amiably to Hanzo and Efi, although his gaze was slow to leave the dragon. “So how’re we doin’ this?”

“Efi will set up the barrier at the ranch before anything else. Orisa will lead the dragon into the trailer, we will close the door, and you will leave,” Hanzo said. The decision would be made by practicalities, at that point- if Bunny was still closest to the door, Bunny would be going first. Orisa being in the trailer, visible and close and familiar, would hopefully keep the dragon somewhat calm. And if not, at least it wouldn’t be able to hurt her too much.

“We takin’ your car then?” he asked, glancing at Hanzo, then offered Efi a friendly smile. In response, she gave him a respectably firm scowl.

“I need to go get the generators,” she said stiffly, and turned and marched away. Orisa gave McCree her emoji smile before she followed, and he watched them go.

“Don’t like me much, huh?” he said when they were gone.

“Efi is very protective of these dragons,” Hanzo said diplomatically. “She does not trust your change of heart.”

“Don’t reckon they need much protectin’,” McCree muttered, glancing again at Bunny. There were no teeth showing yet, even if Hanzo could feel that tickle in his chest again that was the beginnings of a draconic growl. Maybe there was some hope after all. McCree tilted his head to the side, considered the dragon before him. “How much would you say they weigh?”

Hanzo paused, thinking for a moment. Long as a river but thin as a whip, that was a noble dragon. He did some rough calculations- forty feet of ribbon-thin dragon, designed aerodynamically more than anything else, bird-hollow bones and steel-hard but feather-light scales- and ventured a guess. “Twelve hundred kilos each, perhaps.”

“Damn,” McCree said. “Thought it’d be a lot more than that. Miss Orisa probably outweighs ‘em.”

Orisa probably outweighed them by a good bit, Hanzo though. Carbon fiber and tight-woven metal strands to reduce weight while increasing strength only went so far, and above all else, Orisa was not intended to fly. Noble dragons were. “Can the trailer handle that much weight?” he asked, and McCree snorted.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s not even three cows, that thing’s designed to haul upwards of twenty. Mostly worried your angry friend here is gonna decide he doesn’t wanna stay in there while we’re on the way.” He nodded towards Bunny.

“It should be fine,” Hanzo lied calmly, and didn’t look at McCree.

Orisa came back around the corner of the barn, towing behind her a sheet of metal doubling as a sled loaded down with a small mountain of the generators. Clearly they hadn’t found a container to transport them in, which would make getting them into and out of the car that much harder. Efi trotted beside her, generators tucked under both arms as well.

“Barrier first,” she said as they passed Hanzo, heading towards his car. He closed his eyes as the sled skidded past, trying not to think about how long this day was going to be, and failed.

“Right, let’s get to it,” McCree said, and Hanzo nodded and went to work.

* * *

The sun burned the clouds away at noon, leaving the three humans sweaty and hot and snappy after a matter of minutes. The barrier took two tries to set up properly and Hanzo hid in the stables while Efi fiddled and worked out the math, until McCree threw a bottle of sunblock at him at told him to get his ass back out there.

Then there was the drive back to the barn, where Orisa was standing guard over the dragons, who definitely knew something was up and weren’t exactly on their best behavior. They were jockeying for position in the doorway and it turned vicious, Frog snapping at Bunny and Bunny retaliating with a furious snarl. It was over in an instant, no blood drawn or even any contact made, but it scared Efi badly, and Hanzo banished all humans to the house for an hour until everyone had calmed down a little.

Then it was time, and it was Bunny’s blue eyes staring at them from the doorway as Hanzo unwrapped another chocolate bar and handed it to Orisa. McCree was well out of sight, so the only strange thing around was the trailer. The barrier dropped, and Bunny remained in the doorway, gaze darting between them as it considered them all. Hanzo dared a few steps closer and tossed another chocolate bar at it, and Bunny’s head snapped around snake-strike fast, catching the bar before it hit the ground.

“Will he even want to go in the trailer?” Efi asked quietly as Bunny considered this new flavor. There was a stirring deep in the barn, and Bunny’s body shifted as it came to its feet, eyes trained on the chocolate in Orisa’s hand. Success.

“We will see,” Hanzo replied. It wasn’t very high on the scale of potential problems- noble dragons were apex predators, and suffered neither fear nor common sense. The idea that such a small space may be a trap probably wouldn’t even occur to them, especially with the chocolate as enticement.

Bunny’s neck stretched out, mouth opening slightly as it tried to snatch the chocolate away from Orisa. She moved back in turn, forcing Bunny to follow, earning an irritated huff. For a moment it seemed like it wouldn’t work- Bunny laid back instead, giving Orisa a flat stare- but then there was a flash of gold, and Frog tried to shove past. Bunny blocked its sibling with its body and, in classic sibling rivalry mode, rose to its feet again. Frog wanted it, so Bunny had to have it.

Hanzo guided Efi back a few steps as Bunny emerged from the barn, snorting and growling in annoyance as the chocolate remained ever just beyond reach. A long slender stretch of neck, then the body widened into shoulders and the front legs were out. Orisa was at the base of the ramp leading into the trailer and Bunny was following unquestioningly. Hanzo pulled back again as the hind legs came out, and then the tail, which snapped back and forth in irritated concentration. Efi darted around it, risking a whack, and raised the barrier again to keep Frog in. Orisa was in the trailer and Bunny was halfway inside and not balking, then two thirds, then all that was left out was about five feet of tufted tail. Hanzo pushed the door closed until the tail got caught in the frame, pinching it gently and releasing instantly, and it yanked inside with an offended noise from the front of the trailer. The door slammed shut and Hanzo locked it down and stepped back, then let his breath out for the first time since the barrier dropped.

McCree was waiting for him around the side of the trailer, near the truck. Hanzo could hear Orisa’s voice rising tinnily through the windows on the trailer as he walked up, Bunny grunting and snarling and thumping against the walls but thankfully not actively fighting it yet.

“You’re stayin’?” he asked, tipping his head to indicate the barn.

“I do not believe they have ever been separated before,” Hanzo said. “He will not react well when he realizes he is alone.”

“Yeah, but you’re all right with leavin’ me alone with her,” McCree grumbled, glancing at Efi, who saw him looking and scraped up a scowl again. She had yet to warm up to him, although it seemed to be a conscientious choice on her part to not let him charm her.

“You can handle it,” Hanzo said calmly, and McCree slid him a grin.

“See ya in a little while, then,” he said, and Hanzo moved away as he strode over to the truck.

Frog was still sitting at the doorway, watching interestedly as the truck started up and began to pull away. It took a few moments for the dragon to put it together, a second or two of the trailer moving away, and then Frog’s head came up and a shrill screech pierced the air. Bunny responded in kind, muffled and distant, and the trailer shivered with its renewed struggles as it maneuvered onto the driveway and rolled away.

Hanzo spoke to the dragon, soothing and steady. He spoke in Japanese, since it was easier for him, spoke nonsense, sang a lullaby he could almost remember his mother singing to him. Frog trilled high in his throat and paced the barn but returned every time to the doorway, pressing against the barrier as if needing the physical contact. He settled down eventually, body close to the door and neck doubled back, chin resting on his shoulder. He looked more nervous than anything, a small favor. He grumbled every time Hanzo stopped speaking, but he seemed almost calm, so long as he could see Hanzo.

Then, all of a sudden, his head rose and turned, and Hanzo stood from where he’d been sitting in the doorway and turned to watch the truck approach.

McCree ambled over once the truck was parked, helping Hanzo fold the ramp down. “Got your monster settled in,” he said. “Went right into the pens and kept hissin’ at us.”

Hanzo nodded and looked back at Frog, who had gone tense and was staring into the empty trailer expectantly. “First time they have been separated,” he said again, sure about it now. They wouldn’t even need the chocolate to lure him; Frog would go right in, expecting the trailer to take him to the same place as his brother. 

“Are you ready?” Hanzo asked, and McCree moved well out of the way and nodded, and Hanzo dropped the barrier.

Frog trilled again and thundered forward into the trailer without hesitation, rattling it on its shocks. McCree stepped forward to close the door, and the last Hanzo saw of the dragon within, he had turned his head back along his body and was watching them anxiously.

“You trust this one more, huh?” McCree said as they walked up to the truck.

“He seems better socialized, yes,” Hanzo agreed, although that was probably not the right term for it. Bunny was not feral, but defensive, slow to trust. He had not attacked McCree yesterday, he had attacked an unknown intruder that only he had even known was there. Orisa and Hanzo had proven by defending him that he was at least known to them, and Bunny had calmed down enough to eat and let McCree get away.

They stopped by the truck and McCree sighed and turned to look over the barn. “Anythin’ else needs doin’ here?” he asked.

“Some cleanup,” Hanzo said. “It can wait until tomorrow.” There was dragon dung that needed shoveling, and Efi had been using the house as a workplace to build the generators, and Hanzo would prefer they get it all cleaned up sooner rather than later so they could completely cut ties with this place. Still, it could wait a little while.

“See you back home, then?” McCree asked, and Hanzo nodded and turned to head towards his car, pausing just long enough to spare a few words to Frog, who had twisted back around and was peering with one eye through a window on the trailer.

He looked back at the barn one last time, while he was waiting for McCree to maneuver the trailer onto the driveway, and he knew he wouldn’t miss this place.


	5. Chapter 5

Efi was sitting on the border fence to the west, kicking her feet idly, when Hanzo finally completed the long walk up from the main house. She smiled at him, looking more genuinely happy than he had ever seen her.

“Barrier’s right there, so we’re safe,” she said, pointing to a generator dug into the grass a few steps shy of the fence, and Hanzo immediately wondered if she’d set it up that way on purpose. It gave her a good view of the stables and the field and a decent eyeline on the main ranch down the hill, and if she had intended this, then Hanzo approved. “How’s Frog?” she asked.

“Worried,” Hanzo said. He looked towards the stables, where Bunny’s face was visible poking through the doorway, ears keen for the sound of the truck approaching. Orisa was waiting on the inside of the barrier, presumably ready to interrupt the barrier so McCree could unload Frog. It would be best to give them space for a little while, to soothe frayed nerves and let them explore their new home in peace.

McCree pulled the trailer around and backed it carefully into place at the barrier. He climbed out of the truck and stood at the barrier for a moment, likely talking to Orisa, then went over to the trailer door and unlocked it and-

Frog burst out of the trailer with a shriek, and Bunny exploded out of the stalls, knocking the loose door right off its last good hinge and sending it flying. They met in the middle of the field, both veering off just enough to avoid a head-on collision, twisting and twining around each other for a moment before breaking apart again. They were not graceful runners, not with their too-short legs and their too-long bodies, moving like ferrets across the field as they split apart to explore. They kept up a running commentary as they did, chirps and trills and surprising little squeaks, letting each other know the other was still there. Frog passed close by the fence once, not stopping but turning his head to chirp a greeting to Hanzo and Efi as he passed.

“Are you going to be nicer to McCree now?” Hanzo asked. Efi went still for a moment, then started swinging her legs again.

“I guess,” she said. “He seems okay. I’m still going to have Orisa stay here, though.”

“That would be best,” Hanzo agreed. McCree would probably insist on it, actually. Once they settled down and settled in, the dragons would be sure to notice the feast spread out in the fields below. Keeping them well-fed would only help so much in the face of that sort of temptation.

Efi nodded decisively. Then she swung her arm out, bumping her fist against Hanzo’s arm. “We can do this,” she said when he looked at her curiously. “You look like you’re trying not to look worried. But you don’t have to worry. We can do this.”

They couldn’t, he wanted to say, because there was no _this_ to do, no end goal at all, let alone in sight. But he said nothing- she was a child, it wasn’t supposed to be her job to reassure adults. He should be telling her it would be all right.

“I should take you home soon,” he said instead. She had understanding parents who did not seem to worry when she disappeared for hours at a time, but this might be pushing it. She shook her head though.

“It’s fine, I can stay,” she said. “You should try and relax. We did good today.”

“We did,” he agreed quietly, and it was true. They had done good.

* * *

Hours later found the dragons still enjoying their newfound freedom, tussling with each other like kittens and galumphing across the field in their charmingly graceless way. They moved quickly, twining around each other like scaly ribbons, their distinguishing characteristics washed out and their blues rendered purple and green by the colors of the sunset. Hanzo stood by the western fence and watched them play, feeling almost nostalgic. Make them bigger, perhaps twice the length- make the scales silver and grey instead of blue and white and gold- make the face hoary and the flanks battle-scarred...

“Y’know,” McCree said as he circled around behind Hanzo, coming over to lean on the fence beside him. “I’ve known you for, what, five years? And this’s the first time I can recall ever seeing you smile.”

“There was a noble dragon in my hometown,” Hanzo said. “She was much older than these cubs, of course. My brother pulled her whiskers and tried to braid her mane, so she favored me over him.” He glanced at McCree, saw the way he had propped one foot up on the lowermost rail and had leaned his elbows on the highest, and mimicked his pose carefully. The wood was weathered and flaking apart, and he felt more than one splinter bite at his skin through the sleeves of his shirt.

“She was a tame dragon?” McCree asked. He looked amused- at Hanzo, at the story, at the dragon in the distance who had just stumbled and planted his face into the turf, Hanzo could not tell.

“There are no tame noble dragons,” Hanzo corrected. “They are not a domesticated species. But they are a social species. Keep them fed and socialize them to humans, and most are safe enough to allow your children to climb on.”

He had not climbed on her, not like Genji had, but he had spent many hours tucked against the curve of her side while he did his studies, her long body draped in a loose circle around him. His parents had allowed it, figuring that there was no better guardian for a small boy than a large dragon. He mostly remembered luminescent eyes watching him curiously and a bearded chin resting on his legs. 

McCree rapped his metal knuckles against the railing, gently drawing Hanzo back into the present. “Guess that’s why you like these scaly bastards so much,” he said, his tone somewhere between a question and an observation.

“Dragons make sense,” Hanzo said. “They are honest and direct. People…” and he trailed off and shrugged, unable to put it into words.

McCree looked at him for a long moment, his eyes glowing gold like fine whisky in the sunset light. “Are people,” he finished, and leaned over, careful to telegraph the movement, and pushed his shoulder into Hanzo’s. “Nothin’ wrong with that.”

Hanzo shifted in place, trying not to lean into the contact, avoiding McCree’s gaze. He cleared his throat and nodded towards the field, towards the two blue-green ribbons still romping across it. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “They needed this.”

“Yeah, fancy that, locking two big dragons in a tiny little barn for days on end is bad for their health,” McCree agreed dryly. He moved away, leaned back into his own space and leaving Hanzo’s. 

“Yes,” Hanzo agreed distantly, feeling the need to say something but not knowing what. He straightened up from the fence and pushed away. “I need to get Efi home,” he said.

“Orisa’s stayin’, I take it?” McCree asked, and Hanzo nodded. He looked back at the dragons. “Be seein’ you tomorrow, then.”

“Yes,” Hanzo said again, and ducked his head and turned away sharply to hide the heat he could feel crawling across his cheeks. He strode away without another word, feeling stupid and annoyed with himself, heading towards where Efi was dozing on Orisa’s back. 

Frog bounded by again with a goodbye trill, and Hanzo watched him go. He was smiling again, he realized, and- McCree was right, it had been so long. He hadn’t been much for smiling even before his life took its succession of downward turns, but it was worse now. He had to go to work tomorrow and be normal. He could do that.

* * *

He couldn’t do that.

He was unaccountably nervous all the next day, edgy with expectation, waiting for a call from McCree that something had gone horribly wrong. He got a text at noon telling him their first night there was loud but ultimately uneventful- _kept hollerin at each other but they finally piped down and let me get some shuteye about two_ , in McCree’s words- but that somehow just made it worse. He would not feel better until he could see for himself that all was well. It led to wandering attention and shaking hands and he was almost bitten twice by dragons who sensed his distraction, and he decided to leave the sanctuary early rather than risk his fingers to a dragon’s mischief.

They still had to clean up the farmhouse. Hanzo knew this. He still turned the wrong way out of the sanctuary’s parking lot, and failed to do a u-turn at the few lights he passed through. By the time he was halfway to the ranch he had rationalized it- he was closer to the ranch now, he might as well go there for a quick visit and then head back to the farmhouse.

He didn’t like driving over the grass, even though the hovercar wouldn’t actually hurt it- a childhood of training in propriety at work, since the groundskeeper at the Shimada ancestral home would have skinned alive anyone who dared- so he parked in the driveway leading up to the house like he was a normal visitor. There was McCree’s normal truck in the driveway as well, and a motorcycle that looked familiar- dusty enough that its color was undeterminable and somehow rusty in places, despite the rustproof treatment the exposed metal should have received. Hanzo parked behind it, not concerned that he was blocking it in, and got out.

He had just come around the side of the house and was almost turning to head into the fields when there was movement, a surprised grunt, a familiar voice. “Shimada?”

Amid the buzzing in his ears, the numb distance from the world that always came over him for a few seconds whenever something had just gone horribly wrong, Hanzo heard a voice in his head say _that’s right, it’s Morrison’s motorcycle_. Not McCree’s, which he had assumed because it was at McCree’s house, and because he was so focused on the dragons he was forgetting everything else. He would have known, had he just stopped to think.

He turned, pretending he had been circling around to the back of the house and not the fields, and approached the porch slowly. It had a roof so Morrison was hidden in the shade, sitting in a chair up against the wall of the house. He looked almost unreal, like he’d been torn out of one photograph and pasted into another, a piece of one life infringing on the other.

“Morrison,” Hanzo greeted, still somewhat numb, though he could feel the wheels in his mind starting to gain traction. He needed to come up with a reason for his being here, he was at least aware of that much.

Morrison leaned forward in his chair, which groaned under his weight with the voice of old wicker. He looked just as unsettled as Hanzo, which figured- by his reckoning, Hanzo did not belong here anymore than he did by Hanzo’s.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he said. He was holding a glass in one hand and he leaned over to set it on the ground beside his chair before rising to his feet. He was a big man, a fact Hanzo tended to forget when he mostly saw the man trapped behind his desk. He was also a former soldier, a fact he broadcast in the way he carried himself, ramrod-straight spine and challenging stare.

Hanzo turned, straightened up and lifted his chin in defiance, raised an eyebrow as he raked his gaze over the man. He had never been a soldier; he had been trained to give orders, not take them. “You as well.”

Morrison almost smiled. He leaned a hip against the railing and scratched one finger at his chin, a parody of confusion. “So Jesse hasn’t told you,” he said. “Makes sense, since I could’ve sworn you barely tolerated him.”

_Jesse_. That wasn’t a good sign, that Morrison was comfortable enough to refer to McCree by his first name, instead of falling back on his old soldier’s habit of using surnames. “I needed to speak to- Jesse,” Hanzo said, correcting himself at the last second. “If he is not available-”

“Went out to the far field to check on something,” Morrison said calmly. “Pretty sure I can help, whatever you need. I was a farmboy about a thousand years ago, as Gabe likes to keep reminding me.”

Hanzo was being laughed at by a man whose face had forgotten how to smile. He decided to take the bait anyway. “Gabe?” he asked politely.

“Well, Jesse doesn’t talk much about things that really matter,” Morrison allowed. “Gabe is his father, more or less.” And he dropped his hand onto the railing, left hand- there was a glint of gold- and Hanzo felt that icy numbness settle right back in.

“Your husband,” he said. They’d met twice- Hanzo had come into Morrison’s office once and found a Latino man roaming the room like a caged lion and complaining about something, and then again when they had had to stay late to work out a financing issue and Gabe had shown up with enough food to feed an army and the promise that Morrison would be sleeping on the couch for a week if he was that late ever again. Which meant-

“Jesse is your son,” he said.

“He calls me his father-in-law, but it’s close enough,” Morrison said with a shrug. “So why are you here, Shimada?”

Hanzo stared at him. He had ten seconds at most, and then Morrison would call bullshit on whatever excuse he tried to give. He opened his mouth, mind scrambling.

And gave the only answer he could think of.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” McCree said an hour later, standing uselessly with the broom in his hand. “You told him what, now?”

Hanzo heaved another load of dragon dung onto the bin sitting on the gravcart, nearly clipping McCree with it and forcing him to back off a step or two, even if he still couldn’t be bothered to do some actual work. “That we were going out together later,” he said.

The movement helped, gave him something to focus on that wasn’t McCree standing there like a lump, or Efi pretending she couldn’t hear every word while taking the barrier generators off the wall. He pushed a lock of sweaty hair out of his eyes with his wrist and dug his shovel into the pile of hay. He wanted to hit McCree with it.

“Couldn’t think of anythin’ better, huh?” McCree asked. He was grinning, Hanzo could hear it in his voice, and it was a quiet relief. Homophobia was not nearly as common now as it used to be, but it still ran strong in sheltered pockets of the world. He didn’t need to deal with McCree getting weird about it, especially since his traditional response of simply distancing himself from the man would not be an option.

“You couldn’t think to warn me that my boss was your stepfather?” he snapped back, finally looking at McCree. He had the sense to look away, ducking his head like a chastised child.

“Didn’t think it’d matter,” he said, then he grinned again. “So how’d he take it? Threaten to sic Gabe on ya?”

He had been surprised but not stunned, no reaction McCree would find entertaining. He had seemed more amused than anything, and had returned to his chair with his rusty smile and had told him McCree was expected to be back in a little while, and Hanzo had staged a strategic retreat so he could panic quietly in his car. Hanzo grit his teeth and swung the shovel around again, the momentum sending shreds of hay and dried flecks of dragon dung flying.

“Only I eat dinner with ‘em once a week,” McCree continued, “and I figure I need to know what to tell ‘em. Should we come up with a cover story? Sweetheart?”

It was the pause before the _sweetheart_ that did it- McCree called him things like that sometimes, seemingly out of habit, but that pause was a moment of thought, a sign of intention. Hanzo tossed the shovel aside and spun on McCree, hands balling into fists and embarrassed rage staining his cheeks pink, and opened his mouth to say something cruel-

“Doesn’t that mean you’ll have to go out?” Efi asked, and Hanzo jerked back and looked over at her. He’d forgotten her for a moment. “I mean, he’s going to know if you don’t, right?”

“How would he know?” McCree asked, but Hanzo’s heart was sinking with realization. It was not a large town, with all that that implied- there were not a lot of date-worthy restaurants, and gossiping about other people was the town’s number one occupation. Hanzo had mostly managed to stay off the radar by never doing anything of interest, but now… All it would take was five minutes of casual talk in the line at the grocery store for Morrison to learn that his stepson-in-law and that quiet dragon man had never so much as been seen in the same building at the same time, let alone done anything remotely like dating each other.

“Mom tells Dad she doesn’t gossip but she has lunch with her friends and they talk about everybody in town,” Efi said with a shrug. “She calls it her _knitting circle_.”

“Huh,” McCree said, leaning into his broom. He swept an evaluating look over Hanzo, still half a step away and ready to fight, his hands in fists and his weight on the balls of his feet. “Dunno about Jack, but Gabe’s got his own knittin’ circle, and he’ll definitely be expectin’ to hear all about it tomorrow.”

“So you have to go out,” Efi said. “Tonight, right? ‘Cause Hanzo told your dad that.”

“We can make a good showin’ of it,” McCree said. “Don’t think the old man’ll be too shocked if we call it off quick, on account of us not havin’ a single thing in common.”

“Of course,” Hanzo agreed. He turned away and picked the shovel back up and went to scoop up another load of dung. Dating- not even dating, a date, a single occurrence. He could make a good showing of it.

“Right,” McCree said. “Well, I’m gonna go get ready. See you at six thirty at your place, sweetheart?”

Hanzo scraped the blade of the shovel against the concrete floor in a screech. He refused to look at McCree, who had done that hesitation before _sweetheart_ again. “I will be there,” he said.

“ ‘Til then,” McCree said, and passed his broom to Efi on his way out. 

Efi swept up hay for a minute, long enough for the sounds of McCree’s car to fade away as he drove off. Then she looked at Hanzo. “You’re okay, right?”

Hanzo opened his mouth to snap back, then reined in his vitriol and tried again. “I will be fine,” he said. “I have been subjected to blind dates before.” His brother had seen to that. And McCree was tolerable, surprise stepfather aside. Certainly Hanzo could suffer through an evening in his presence.

“You’re not going to stab him with a fork, right?” Efi pressed. “Because it would be bad if you got arrested.”

“No forks, no,” Hanzo said. Forks small enough to be used for eating would only really be good for inflicting shallow wounds. On the other hand, most of the restaurants in town had an extensive steak selection and so would provide steak knives with the standard silverware set. Just in case.

“Well, we’re not gonna get all this done before then, so do you want to just go home?” Efi asked. “And by home, I mean the ranch. I want to talk to Orisa.”

Hanzo stared at her, with her guileless big brown eyes, and sighed and set the shovel aside. The barn had been safe enough when there were actual dragons living in it, it would stay safe for a few days more. Efi grinned and dropped the broom.

“We need to lock the door,” Hanzo told her as she darted out of the barn, and she veered back to do so once he was out. Then she raced ahead of him to the car, and Hanzo came along after her, trying not to pay any heed to the rising sense of doom.


	6. Chapter 6

He knew they were in trouble when he opened the door a little while later to find McCree wearing a bad suit.

“Is that what you’re wearin’?” McCree asked before Hanzo could, eyeing him up and down, as if there was something objectionable to a simple dress shirt and nice jeans.

“Yes,” Hanzo said. “And you?” The jacket was too tight across McCree’s shoulders and rose up too high on his wrists and bunched awkwardly around his prosthetic, his pants were too short, and the whole thing was wrinkled and smelled of dust. In fairness, it probably had looked good on him when he had worn it last, before he reached his height and his shoulders filled out. But now all it did was emphasize how uncomfortable this whole farce was for him.

Hanzo stepped out onto the stoop, turned and closed the door behind him. When he had turned back McCree had the jacket off and draped over one arm. He still looked rumpled and unhappy, but that was not something that would improve by being called out on it, so Hanzo let it go. It would be just one night, after all. One awkward date in public, and no one would doubt that they had decided themselves simply incompatible. Hanzo would just have to be more cautious when coming to the ranch after this, was all.

The car ride was silent and tense. McCree fiddled with the music player, letting each song play for only a few seconds before switching to a new one, before finally settling on a mellow country song that he sang along with under his breath. He had a nice voice from what Hanzo could hear, so he said nothing and let the man pretend he wasn’t there.

The restaurant McCree chose was middle of the road, not pricey but not cheap, real linen tablecloths and lighting turned down low, but the flower centerpiece was fake and the menu proudly boasted the largest craft beer selection in the area and exactly four wines. Hanzo ordered water and waited patiently while McCree asked complicated questions about the beer selection before finally settling on one. Then the waitress left to get their drinks, and it was just the two of them.

“So,” McCree said, unfolding the menu and holding it awkwardly low so it wouldn’t block his eye line, “I saw your girl on the ranch when I was leavin’.”

“Yes, I dropped her off,” Hanzo agreed. Ninety percent of the menu was red meat and the vegetarian selection was insulting.

“Her parents don’t care she didn’t come home?” McCree asked. “How’d you even meet, anyway? Bit of an odd pair, you two.”

“She is my next-door neighbor,” Hanzo told him. “She knocked on my door one day and said she had noticed I did not use my garage, and would be all right if she used it as a work space.” It had been sudden, with Hanzo offering Efi and her family nothing but the formal politeness he gave strangers, but then again Efi was of the _it can’t hurt to ask_ school of thought, and it had paid off for her.

The waitress brought them their drinks, a small glass of ice water and a giant glass mug of beer that slopped foam onto the table as she put it down. She asked to take their orders and cheerfully retreated when they asked for a minute. McCree took a swig of beer when she was gone, chugging a good third of the glass in one go.

“And Morrison?” Hanzo asked. “He is your father-in-law?”

“It’s- no,” McCree said. “I mean, yes and no. It’s more complicated than just that.”

Hanzo lowered his menu and raised an eyebrow, clearly waiting for an explanation, and McCree sighed and dragged a hand over his beard.

“A’right, first of all, young me was an idiot,” he said. “Stupid and stubborn and proud and so sure I knew more’n anyone else, you know how it is when you’re a teenager, right? Anyway, Gabe pulled me out of a bad spot,” and two metal fingers tapped dully against the wood of the table, almost a tic, “and took me in for a while, and I got a little-” He interrupted himself again with another sigh.

“I was like a stray dog,” he said finally. “All snarls and attitude, but real soft on whoever tossed me a couple scraps, y’know? And that was Gabe. He took in this idiot kid and sorted me out and didn’t toss me out on my ear even though I did some really stupid shit when I was livin’ with him. And then Jack shows up, and turns out he and Gabe are kinda involved, and he just stepped back for a while ‘cause they didn’t have their shit sorted out, and I didn’t really wanna share Gabe with him. Took him aside one night and tried to scare him off with some big speech and some bad threats. Called him my father-in-law because I sure as shit weren’t calling him stepdad.” He chuckled, staring down into his beer, lost in the memories. “Of course, Gabe hasn’t let me live it down since.”

Hanzo considered Morrison as he had been on McCree’s porch, big and imposing, every line on his body a warning sign of terrifying competence. “You threatened him,” he repeated.

“Yeah, I was dumb and good with a gun,” McCree said. “Thought back then that was all I’d need to get through life.” He looked up again, a curious glance. “So what about your brother? You never mentioned him before.”

He had almost relaxed, had allowed himself to unwind somewhat in the face of McCree’s self-deprecating story. He only realized this when he went bow-string-tight again, every scrap of warmth instantly snuffed out for chilliness. McCree saw the shift and frowned, but before he could apologize, retract the question, the waitress appeared at his elbow, asking again if they were ready to order.

When she was gone again, the silence lingered, neither one sure how to recover. It was entirely Hanzo’s fault, truly- his entire life was a minefield of conversation enders, and he had allowed McCree to stumble on unaware. And now it was awkward again- the only subject they were both equally comfortable discussing was not safe to discuss in such a public place.

“Don’t like talkin’ about your family, huh?” McCree asked after a solid five minutes of silence. Hanzo gave him a warning look, but it did no good, as the man carried on. “Should’ve figured that, you bein’ so open and all.”

“For many generations my family was involved in questionable activities,” Hanzo said, his tone cool and controlled and sharp as a whip strike.

“Yakuza?” McCree interrupted, eyeing him carefully, and Hanzo merely took a sip of water and did not answer.

“When my father died, my brother and I got into a fight over the leadership of our clan that did not end well for either of us. While we were recovering, a cousin visited us, and told us she planned on taking over and leading the family in a more legitimate direction.”

“Good for her,” McCree said. “You didn’t like that idea, I take it.”

Quite to the contrary, it was what Hanzo himself would have done, had he not had a lifetime’s worth of other people’s expectations weighing him down. It was what he would have done if it had ever occurred to him as a possibility. “She asked that we leave Japan,” he said. She had asked Genji nicely, kneeling at his side with her heart in her eyes. She had told Hanzo firmly, looming over him on his sickbed with four armed men behind her. She knew her cousins well.

“Shit,” McCree muttered. He took a moment, then opened his mouth to say something.

“Do not apologize,” Hanzo snapped, and McCree snapped his mouth shut and leaned back in his chair, frowning across the table at him. “It was for the best,” he said.

Genji had told him that once, over the phone, a thousand miles away from his brother and safer for the distance than he would be in nearness. It was harsh, but it was for the best for everyone, save maybe the elders who would be too stubborn to bend to the new regime. And Hanzo agreed with him, although he had never been able to actually admit it.

McCree said nothing, his mobile face gone blank and emotionless. He only moved when the waitress bustled up, depositing their salads on the table and asking if they needed refills.

“Oh yeah,” McCree said, nudging his nearly-drained glass towards her. “You want somethin’ stronger, Han?” he asked. “Think you might need it.”

“No, thank you,” Hanzo said to the waitress, who offered him an uncertain smile and retreated. He sipped at his water again instead, wishing there was any hope of this restaurant getting their hands on good sake.

“Good news,” McCree told his salad as he picked out a crouton and popped it into his mouth. “Think we can safely break up after this.”

Hanzo said nothing, his damage done for the night, and ate his food in silence.

* * *

Orisa was waiting for her at the edge of the property, her eyes smiling as the rest of her face couldn’t. Efi bounded over to her and hopped up onto her back, leaning against her shoulder as she turned and trotted back over to the dragon field.

“Mister McCree said he and Mister Hanzo were going out tonight,” Orisa said. “I did not understand. Please clarify.”

“They’re on a date,” Efi said, frowning to herself as she tried to figure out how to phrase this. Orisa was adaptable, and had a pretty steep social learning curve, but she simply lacked the context for this to make sense. “They’re trying to see if they’re compatible,” she settled on.

“They were compatible yesterday,” Orisa said.

“No, I mean romantically, not as friends.” Efi frowned again. Hanzo didn’t have many friends, and McCree didn’t either, so far as she could tell. They both seemed lonely. She hoped they’d work out, at least well enough to still be friends after this.

Then Frog trilled at them, and Efi laughed and mimicked the noise as best she could, slipping off Orisa to run over to the fence. Frog trilled again before turning and bounding away. He ran funny, all long body and short legs and too much tail trailing after him.

Efi climbed up onto the fence, sitting on the topmost slat with her legs kicking free. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her music until she came across one of her favorite songs. She hummed as it played, sang along with a few words she knew, fumbled through a few more she didn’t. She watched the sky darken and the stars creep out as the song played on a loop. Then it ended for the fifth time, and she heard a noise- a stirring, a breath. She looked back down and Bunny was inches away, ears pricked forward curiously, eyes trained on the phone resting on Efi’s knee.

“Oh, hey,” she said, and Bunny looked up to her. “You like Lucio’s music too, huh? That’s great, I have a lot of it.” She switched to a new song and Bunny tilted his head at the different beat. He grumbled low in his throat, sounding like he was gargling gravel. He shuffled in closer, his neck curling in on itself while his head remained stationary.

“Your brother was named after him, you know,” Efi told him in the pause between songs. She knew better than to talk over Lucio. “You were named after D.Va. I can load up some of her streams and play them for you, if you want.”

Bunny tilted his head the other way, like a dog tracking a sound. He settled in slowly, folding himself down. Efi smiled to herself and chose an older song and sang along to it as best she could, stumbling over strange words and filling in instrumental gaps with _la-la-la_ ’s. Bunny snorted at her when it was over, and Efi grinned and replayed it and sang along again, a little surer of herself this time. She could hear Orisa moving behind her, patrolling the outer edge of the barrier dome, and Frog was still lumbering around somewhere in the field. And under it all, she could hear Bunny grumbling again, a sound almost like he was humming along to the song as well, his eyes drifting shut and his head dipping down.

She chose a new song when that one ended, and another one after that, and sang to the dragon at her feet as the sun set and night fell.

* * *

The dragons were gone.

She knew it the second she saw the tire tracks carved into the soft earth outside the barn, long before she jimmied the lock and pushed the door open. The barn was empty, as she had expected, bar a half-hearted effort at cleaning up. There was a soiled pile of hay in the far back corner and the air was thick with the unmistakable reek of reptile, but there was a distinct lack of actual reptiles.

She stared into the darkness for a moment or two, as if the dragons would reappear if she just waited long enough. Then she stepped back and pulled her phone out of her coat pocket.

“There has been a delay,” she said when the call connected.

“A delay,” the man on the other end of the line echoed. There was a pause as he cooed promises to return soon to the woman complaining faintly in the background, then noises as he disentangled himself and moved out of earshot. Then he said, “Explain what you mean by _a delay_.”

“Someone has moved them,” she said, pacing back over to the tire tracks. Real tires, not a hover vehicle, good for towing heavy or independently mobile cargo. Hover vehicles could not be trusted to keep their balance if their cargo started thrashing. 

“Moved them,” he said, and she felt a twinge, an echo deep inside- annoyance at the repetition. It faded quickly enough. “I thought you- Hamilton’s dead, you said.”

She did not bother to correct his assumption that she had killed Hamilton. She had done that once already, and he did not quite believe her, and she didn’t care enough to try again. “There were others here,” she said, crouching down by a particular set of footprints. Four feet, big and wide-spread, sunk heavily into the turf. An omnic, and not one whose likes she had seen before. Over by the house, near the driveway, the omnic’s feet had dug in deep, and the grass in front of it was torn up by claws. An omnic with defensive capabilities, most likely.

The man was still talking, a buzz in her ear. “I will keep you updated,” she told him, and ended the call. He knew better than to call back, at least. Then she stood up and started walking to her car.

There were only so many places where two large dragons and a large omnic could be safely hidden. A minor delay at best, and then she would be collecting her fee and moving on. She had better things to be doing than crawling through these dirty little towns, tracking down a couple of errant dragons.

She checked her phone one last time as she unlocked her car. The address was preloaded and directions were available. She would go there later, after she’d looked into town records to see who owned large tracts of land. She checked anyway, swiping her thumb across the screen to bring it up, then downsize it again.

The Sunshine Sanctuary for Dragons was on her list of stops.

* * *

It felt good to throw things- his car keys, his suit jacket, his stupid fancy shoes because Gabe would’ve skinned him alive if he wore his boots to a proper date- so Jesse did all of that. Then he stood in the living room and fumed, aimlessly angry. He had no one to blame but himself, really- Hanzo all but had it written on his face, the miles of rough road he’d come down to get this far, in the cool wariness of his manner and the loneliness in his eyes. And then along came Jesse McCree, stomping all over the fragile peace they had found yesterday by taking something freely given and demanding more.

He got changed into his normal clothes and yanked his boots on and hesitated for a moment before threading his gun belt on. The heavy old revolver sat low on his hip, a comforting weight on his thigh. There were coyotes in the hills, persistent and sly enough to survive all manners of apocalypses, and dangerous to young calves. A good enough excuse for the weapon. And once he was out in the back field, he could venture on beyond the tree line and shoot some cans. He dropped his hat onto his head and walked out.

He remembered his guests- both live-in and temporary- only when he encountered them. Efi was sitting in the grass just this side of the barrier, holding up her phone so that blue-eyed devil could watch whatever was on the screen, featuring _pew-pew_ shooting noises and a girl shouting in what sounded like Korean. Impossible to say if the dragon was actually watching or was simply distracted by the movement on the screen, but it didn’t lift its head or growl or show Jesse those pretty teeth, so he retreated as quietly as he could and headed the long way around instead.

Three shots in- his night vision wasn’t great, was outright bad compared to as little as five years ago, but that was the price you paid for living- and the other company ghosted into the clearing, no doubt drawn by the sound of the gun. She was near-silent on her hooves, even despite her size, and she patiently waited a responsible distance away until Jesse looked to be done shooting things for the moment.

“You need somethin’?” he asked, hoping to preempt the conversation. He liked Orisa well enough, all things considered- he’d be less inclined to her if she hadn’t introduced herself by saving his sorry ass, but never mind that- he just didn’t need her particular mix of curious and insightful right now.

“I wished to express sympathy,” Orisa told him, and that caught him off-guard enough that he stopped reloading and actually turned to face her. Her face wasn’t much given to expressing any emotion, but at least she wasn’t doing her happy eyes at him.

“Sympathy,” he echoed, trying to place that one before giving up. “Why’s that, then?”

“You and Mister Hanzo do not appear to be romantically compatible,” Orisa told him, and when Jesse gaped blankly at her, she explained. “Miss Efi informed me that a _date_ is a way to check for romantic compatibility. She believes that your current behavior means you and Mister Hanzo are not compatible.”

“Guess not,” Jesse said once he managed to close his mouth and sort out his words. “Didn’t matter much anyway, it was just cover to throw Jack off,” he added.

“You did not wish for it to go well?” Orisa asked.

“No,” he said immediately.

“So you did want it to go well,” Orisa said, a logical enough conclusion. “And it did not. So I am expressing my sympathy.” She reached out one hand and patted Jesse on the head like he was a puppy. “There, there,” she said.

“It was a fake date,” he told her, pushing her hand away. “It wasn’t s’posed to go good or bad, we were just puttin’ on a show.”

Orisa seemed almost happy to hear that. “If it was faked, the results are invalid,” she said. “So you are still potentially romantically compatible.”

“More likely not,” Jesse said. “But it don’t matter, ‘cause we weren’t actually tryin’.”

“Oh,” Orisa said. She looked over Jesse, the gun in his hand, then down to the tin can targets at the other end of his makeshift range. “Then may I ask why you are unhappy?”

Jesse thought about explaining, then thought about arguing. Then he shook it all off with a shrug. “Never said I was,” he said, and turned and pointed his gun down the range.

“Miss Efi said-”

“Miss Efi is eleven,” Jesse interrupted, not unkindly. “She doesn’t know everything.” Smartest kid he’d ever met, sure, but still just a kid. Orisa was too, in her own way.

Orisa waited until he was done shooting again, visibly thinking it over. When he stopped to reload again, she reached out and patted him on the head again. “There, there.”

“What’s that for?” Jesse asked, pushing his hat back up from where it had been wedged down on his ears by Orisa’s patting.

“You still seem unhappy,” Orisa said, and when Jesse didn’t respond, she moved away, leaving him to stew in silence.

He stared after her for a long moment, then snapped the chamber into place, turned on his heel, and fired off six shots in rapid succession without aiming, each shot knocking over a tin can.


	7. Chapter 7

Morrison’s motorcycle was in the parking lot at the sanctuary the next morning. Hanzo realized this only when he pulled into the spot directly behind it and then spent a good three minutes debating on whether or not he should move to a different spot. He ultimately decided that he was being ridiculous, and that Morrison would be even less interested in discussing Hanzo’s private life now than he had been before, since said private life now featured his- stepson? Son-in-law? All Hanzo knew was that he would rather be physically tortured than have to hear about yet another one of Genji’s indiscretions, and he couldn’t imagine it would be any different for Morrison and McCree just because they some shade of father and son instead of brothers.

Still, he didn’t go inside the main building, circling the long way around the outside of it to avoid walking past the windows in Morrison’s office, and told himself it was a matter of practicality. He and McCree needed to sort out what story they were going to tell people so as to not contradict each other. He was almost to the field with the dragon pens when he heard a door swing open behind him and a familiar voice, big and booming, echoed through it. Hanzo veered off-course immediately- the speaker’s time was precious, and securing any of it for himself would likely be an all-day campaign.

He got to the open door just before it closed and leaned against the doorframe. The person beyond was a veritable mountain of a man, incredibly tall and hugely built, muscle on top of muscle on top of what was probably the most genuinely friendly disposition Hanzo had ever encountered outside of dogs. He was bellowing at someone in another room but looked back sharply at the sound of the door not closing, more in-tune with his surroundings than his demeanor would suggest. Another old soldier.

He smiled, big and bright, when he spotted Hanzo, as though they were old friends long parted instead of coworkers who had seen each other the day before. “Hanzo!” he boomed, his indoor voice only marginally quieter than his yells. “Good morning, my friend. How does the day find you?”

“Well enough, thank you,” Hanzo said. “If you have time available, I have a matter I would like to discuss with you.”

Reinhardt- Doctor Wilhelm, although he had eroded Hanzo’s fastidious devotion to such formality with all the inevitable patience of a river carving away at a mountain- turned to face him fully, stepping away and allowing the door to the hallway to close, giving them some attempt at privacy. “I have some time now,” he said.

“It is a matter that requires some discretion, and a fair bit of explaining,” Hanzo admitted. “It would be better to just show you.” He could trust Reinhardt, who had a heart to match his giant stature, to protect the dragons with his silence. He would probably be worse than Efi about it, honestly.

The big man was silent for a moment- kind and generous, certainly, but also too old and seasoned to be anything like naive- but then he smiled again. “After work, then,” he said, and Hanzo nodded in agreement and retreated back outside as soon as was polite.

He headed back out to the field and approached the dragon pens, still close enough to on time to be allowed. The dragon by the main gate chittered a greeting, then swung her head back around to stare out beyond the south side of the pen walls. There were several of them looking that direction, so Hanzo followed the fence around the corner.

There was a woman standing along the fence line, tall and slender, long black hair pulled back into a high ponytail and letters like shattered glass inked along her right forearm. She was studying the dragons with a predator’s gaze, the nearest dragon staring back with equal malice. Hanzo looked at her and his fingers itched for a weapon he had not used outside of practice in over a decade.

“May I help you?” he asked, and she faked a startled reaction to that- too slow, too steady to be real, she knew he was there- and turned to blink at him.

“I am sorry,” she said with some shade of Europe in her words. French, most likely- she had let him get close enough to read the letters on her arm, _nightmare_ in French. Most Americans thought European accents were romantic, but Hanzo stood unswayed. If anything, his urge for a weapon increased. “I have an appointment here, but I wanted to see them first,” and she gestured towards the dragons. The one nearest her swayed its head like a snake sizing up prey at the movement. If she had been within striking range, she might well have lost the hand entirely.

“This area is not open to visitors,” Hanzo told her. She looked at him again, the same flat, considering look she had been giving the dragon, before her mask slid back into place and she smiled prettily.

“Forgive me,” she said, and brushed past him, heading towards the main building. He watched her go until she was out of sight, then looked back at the dragon. He trusted its instincts, and his own. If nothing else, Morrison would most likely accept _the dragons don’t like her_ as an excuse to make her leave.

He shook it off and headed around the fence back to the gate. He had an actual job to do, and it was time to get to it.

* * *

After work, for the only veterinarian at a dragon sanctuary, turned out to be after nine o’clock. Hanzo stayed with the dragons until they got tired of him and chased him off so they could rest, then hung out awkwardly in the corner of the vet clinic instead. It was a busy place, for all there were only four people actually working in it, although a more snide person might make a comment there about how Reinhardt could account for two or even three more alone. After that was the car shuffle, because Hanzo had foolishly not chosen his car for its ability to transport retired German war machines, and while Reinhardt could technically fit it was a physically painful thing just to contemplate. Which meant he came to the ranch at ten in the evening, hungry and cranky and tired and smarting with embarrassment over the previous night’s disaster that swept over him again when he spotted McCree waiting for them on the porch.

Reinhardt, thankfully, made a fantastic buffer. He got out of his car with a joyful greeting and swept McCree up into a bonecreaking hug while Hanzo stayed a safe distance away, amused despite himself at the look on McCree’s face. He had not yet fallen victim to one of Reinhardt’s famous rib-cracking hugs- Reinhardt was careful to maintain a respectful distance between them after the one time he’d clapped Hanzo on the shoulder and Hanzo had jerked away like it was an attack. Apparently it was something to be grateful for.

“God _damn_ ,” McCree said when Reinhardt had released him and moved away, rubbing the heel of his right hand against his sternum. “Always forget about that, keep thinkin’ it’s my imagination and it’s not really that bad, and I’m wrong every damn time.”

“You are friends?” Hanzo asked. It was a safe enough question to ask.

“Yeah, he and Jack worked together to start that sanctuary of yours,” McCree said. “Lotsa late nights as casa de Reyes, the two of them yellin’ at each other like they do, Gabe yellin’ at both of them ‘cause they’re keepin’ him awake.” He glanced at Reinhardt and sidled a little closer to Hanzo, lowering his voice a little. “You sure about this?”

“Yes,” Hanzo said, and strode forward, gesturing for Reinhardt to follow him. McCree ambled along after them, his spurs jangling brightly.

They stopped just short of the back field, not quite in eyesight of the dragons yet, especially given how dark it was. Hanzo hesitated doubting his choice for the first time- he was dragging yet more people into this, more people to go down with him when it all inevitably came crashing down- but McCree slipped right in instead.

“This one’s kind of a big deal, Rein, so we’re gonna hafta ask you to keep quiet about it, all right?” he asked. He’d come up on Reinhardt’s left, the side with the eye scarred and clouded with blindness, so Reinhardt turned to look at him properly.

“I am capable of keeping secrets, Jesse,” he said scoldingly, almost a warning. McCree ducked his head and gestured him onwards.

“Stop at the fence and give a whistle, one of ‘em’ll come to check you out,” he said, and then it was Reinhardt’s turn to forge ahead, the other two trailing in his wake.

It was Frog who came, naturally. He slid in slow and low, wary of this new person, his eyes and scales glittering in the moonlight. Reinhardt went uncharacteristically still and silent, staring at the dragon, who in turn rose up and tilted head to better study this massive human. McCree moved next to Hanzo, arms wrapped across his stomach, his own head tilted as he watched. Even Orisa was nearby, her eyes glowing faintly in the darkness.

“Where,” Reinhardt began, reaching out to touch and frowning when he encountered the barrier. He turned to look back at Hanzo and McCree. “Where did you find such a glorious beast?”

“A barn up north of town, believe it or not,” McCree said casually, as if was no more remarkable than a good find at a yard sale. “Gonna have to ask Efi if she knows where they came from before that.”

The unfamiliar name didn’t seem to faze Reinhardt, who turned back to the dragon. Bunny had slunk onto the scene by then, ever his brother’s surly shadow. At least he was just looking and not growling.

“Are you experienced with noble dragons?” Hanzo asked, forcing himself to engage. He moved forward and Bunny traced his movement, pressing in closer to him and snorting out a breath in semi-friendly greeting. Reinhardt was starting to smile, something softer than his normal exuberance.

“I am,” he said. “They roosted in the village of Eichenwalde. They would accompany us on our charges against the omnic lines.” His smile grew softer still, and bittersweet. “They did not suffer a single loss that I remember.”

That was in keeping with other reports from other areas. The omnics had been prepared for human resistance, not dragons violently defending their territory from an aggressive threat, and by the time they had adapted the crisis was all but over.

“They are young,” Reinhardt observed, and looked over at Hanzo. “Is there something that worries you?”

“They cannot fly,” Hanzo said, and McCree made a noise of surprise that they both ignored. “They have not even attempted, that I have observed.”

Reinhardt turned back to Frog, leaning one way and the other to try and see around his head. “I need light,” he said, and Orisa approached a few steps and produced a high-wattage light that blinded all three of them for the first minute it was on. Reinhardt studied her silently, then turned back to the dragons without a word, making sharp gestures in an attempt to get Frog to turn his head. McCree circled around him and came up to Hanzo in a slow, easy sidle.

“They fly,” he said quietly, not quite a question. He raked his eyes along Frog’s body. “Can’t help but notice they don’t have wings.”

“No,” Hanzo agreed.

“Any idea how that works?” McCree asked.

“Not as such,” Hanzo said. “There has been some research into it, but noble dragons are rare and long lived.” There had been plenty of theories in the old days, of course, but biologists in more recent years remain baffled. There had been a long and rambling article released at the turn of the century that essentially translated to _we have no idea and it really bothers us_ , but nothing since. “There are ways to prevent them from flying, however,” he added.

“Not friendly ways, I take it,” McCree said, again not seeming to want an answer. He took a breath as if to continue speaking but hesitated instead, long enough that Hanzo glanced at him curiously.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked.

McCree seemed to consider his answer for a moment, eyes half-lidded and heavy as they rested on Hanzo. “Nah,” he said finally. “Just had a chat yesterday that’s got me thinkin’.”

That explained nothing, and Hanzo was about to point that out when Reinhardt abruptly turned away from the barrier and towards them. McCree stepped back and it was only then that Hanzo realized how close he had been, close enough to feel the warmth of his body fade away with the new distance.

“I do not have the time or instruments to do any tests,” Reinhardt told them both. He looked unhappy, a frown pulling heavily at his face. It added years to him and made him look his age for once. “I will leave work early tomorrow and try then, if that is acceptable,” he added, looking at McCree for the last part.

“Aw, Rein, you don’t gotta ask permission, you’re always welcome here,” McCree said, and Reinhardt’s smile returned. “Just watch out for the blue one, he’s mean.”

“Undersocialized,” Hanzo corrected when Reinhardt looked past him to the dragon in question. Bunny tilted his head and stared back, meeting Reinhardt’s gaze with indolent curiosity.

“I’ll be careful, then,” Reinhardt said, and gave McCree a hearty slap on the back that nearly lifted him right out of his boots. “Thank you for your concern,” he said, and, with a final farewell to them both, started walking back across the field.

McCree wheezed out a breath and bent over double, resting his hands on his knees and swearing quietly at the ground. “I swear he does that on purpose,” he said a bit louder.

Hanzo lingered a moment to make sure McCree was all right- with Reinhardt leaving, the buffer was gone and the awkwardness was bound to set in again. He turned away, but McCree said his name and he hesitated.

“A’right,” McCree said, standing up straight and rolling his shoulders with a grimace. “So I was thinkin’ earlier. Do you maybe wanna try the date thing again? Better, this time.”

“No,” Hanzo said, and frowned up at McCree. “Why would you want that?”

“ ‘Cause it’s been botherin’ me,” McCree said. “And you too, or you wouldn’t be lookin’ to run away right now.”

Hanzo steeled himself instantly, settled his weight back onto his heels instead of the balls of his feet and scowled at McCree’s knowing smirk. “I do not see how it would be an improvement over yesterday,” he said.

“No fancy clothes, no fancy restaurant- they got a couple food trucks on the main drag downtown, we hit one’o them and talk about dragons and make fun of Jack and argue about whether or not Efi’s gonna rule the world someday. Standard first date stuff, nothing big.”

McCree looked hopeful, almost. Wary still, but expectant. Hanzo stared at him for a second, then jerked his chin up in half a nod, ignoring all common sense.

“Very well,” he said- it would be easier than pretending it had ended so soon, avoiding Morrison and hiding his visits to the ranch- and McCree’s smile grew slow and steady, like dawn after a cold winter’s night, and something warm bloomed in answer under Hanzo’s breastbone.

“Right then,” McCree said. “Day after tomorrow, so we’re here for Rein if he needs us?”

“All right,” Hanzo agreed, a little confused. His hand had risen to rub unconsciously at his breastbone and he forced it to drop again.

“All right,” McCree echoed. “Got things to do around here I been lettin’ slide on account of my guests, so I’ll see you then, yeah?”

“Yes,” Hanzo said, and McCree smiled again and ambled off, and Hanzo frowned in bewilderment after him. That was not at all what he had been expecting.

Bunny whuffed, close enough to the barrier that his breath stirred Hanzo’s hair. Hanzo looked at him, then at Orisa, who was still standing sentinel and had watched it all in silence. Then he shook his head and started walking.

* * *

He arrived at the ranch the next day after work to find Efi facing down Reinhardt, which looked every bit as ridiculous as it sounded.

She had clearly intercepted him on his way up to the back field and had planted herself in his path, hands on her hips and chin tilted up, somehow giving the impression of looking down on him despite being not even half his height and somewhere around a quarter of his total mass. Reinhardt, for his part, looked like he was trying very hard to respect the situation and not smile at her protectiveness.

“-can’t go back there- Hanzo!” Efi interrupted herself mid-sentence, clearly delighted to spot backup, as Hanzo approached them. She pointed at Reinhardt, who nodded a greeting to Hanzo but was cut off before he could speak. “He said he’s a vet and he’s here to do check ups, but he keeps trying to go back to the back field. That’s trespassing,” she told Reinhardt, scolding him.

“She is very persistent,” Reinhardt told him.

Hanzo stopped a few steps away, equal distance from them both, a near-perfect triangle. “Doctor Reinhardt Wilhelm,” he said, looking at Efi and gesturing towards the man in question. “The veterinarian at the sanctuary. I brought him here yesterday to check on the dragons.” He turned to Reinhardt next. “Efi Oladele. She is responsible for the dragons.”

“Oh,” Reinhardt said, and turned his gaze back to Efi, both of them regarding the other in a new light. Reinhardt, at least, was smart enough not to say something like _you’re not what I was expecting_ , and instead saved himself by saying, “I have heard many good things about you, Miss Oladele.”

Efi frowned at him, looked at Hanzo again, looked back at Reinhardt. “What’s wrong with them?” she asked finally, looking at the medkit in Reinhardt’s hand.

Lying would accomplish nothing, especially since she could clearly tell that everything was not well, so Hanzo stepped closer to her, urging her to turn and walk with him to the back field. “We believe something is interfering with their ability to fly,” he said. And, because it had to be asked, “Would Hamilton have done something like that?”

“No,” Efi said instantly, then bit her lip. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“We will get them flying again, have no fears,” Reinhardt told her as gently as he could, keeping pace easily. Efi did not find it reassuring, if her expression was any indication.

Orisa was waiting for them by the barrier, and Frog with her, obviously attracted by the sounds of human voices in the distance. He trilled a cheerful greeting and darted away and back again, a blue whirlwind of energy. Reinhardt smiled at the spectacle.

“I will need to touch him,” he said, looking at Hanzo first, then Orisa. He still had not said a word about her, and addressed her with strict politeness and only when absolutely necessary. He had dedicated the best years of his life to fighting omnics; that he was now willing to peacefully tolerate one was the best anyone could have asked of him. Hanzo pulled out the barrier interrupter Efi had given him, then hesitated. He could see Bunny over at the stables, not inside but coiled near the door all the same, watching their every move. Then he activated the interrupter and stepped through, Reinhardt and Orisa both following.

Frog immediately pressed in close, his whiskered snout shoving against Hanzo’s chest, then Reinhardt’s as he scented them both in turn. He sat back, arching his neck up as he stared down at them, as if he were waiting for something.

“That’s Frog,” Efi said from outside the barrier. “The other one’s Bunny.”

“Hello, Frog,” Reinhardt said, somehow turning the ridiculous name into something almost noble. Frog turned his head to look at him, then shifted back to Hanzo. He was still waiting, getting impatient now, the tip of his tail twitching back and forth.

Hanzo sighed- he had been found out earlier than he would have liked. He dug into his pocket and produced a chocolate bar, earning a trill from Frog and a distant shriek from Bunny. He unwrapped it and broke it in half and threw one half as far as he could, Bunny veering off from his approach to chase after it. He handed the rest to Orisa, who held it out to Frog, luring him back down close to the ground.

“They like chocolate,” Efi said, then added worriedly, “That doesn’t hurt them, right?”

“No,” Reinhardt reassured her, already reaching up to pat at Frog’s neck. The dragon was understandably leery- the last time he had been offered this treat, he had been separated from his brother and stuffed into a trailer. Finally he snaked his head down, biting delicately at Orisa’s hand in pursuit of the chocolate bar, and Reinhardt slid his hand up the scaly neck and buried his fingers into the thick fur of the dragon’s mane. There was skin under there instead of scales, making it the best place on a dragon’s body to inject or implant something. Frog shook his neck, trying to chase off the strange sensation, but he was too interested in the chocolate to put any real effort into it.

“There,” Reinhardt said, parting the fur. Hanzo had a brief glimpse of something small and metallic, glowing a faint but steady red light, before Frog moved again and it was lost.

“What is it?” Efi asked, leaning forward to see. Reinhardt didn’t answer, but set his kit down instead, pulling out a handheld scanner and scanning close to where the device was. He stepped back when it beeped and Hanzo moved with him, stepping closer to see as the holoscreen popped up. The readout made no real sense to him, but it clearly did to Reinhardt and even Efi, who was behind it and reading it mirrored.

“What is it?” Hanzo asked to their grim and upset faces, annoyed with his own lack of knowledge. The readout was so much gibberish to him, charts with their lines flexing and flowing, walls of text, a display showing what looked like brain waves from something not nearly mentally active enough to be a dragon.

“It’s EM shielded so the scanner can’t get a good read,” Efi said, leaning forward even more. She nearly mashed her nose against her own barrier and startled back when it crackled into visibility before her, clearly having forgotten about it for a moment, then she pressed herself as close to it as she could. Reinhardt turned himself and held out the scanner so they were both reading it properly. “But it looks like it’s interfering with his body’s electrical system.”

“Creating an impulse that interacts with nerve clusters and muscle groups,” Reinhardt said. “It is making him too weak to fly.”

Hanzo looked at Frog, who had finally been allowed to take the chocolate and was watching for more. Bunny was creeping up on them too, coming in around his brother’s far side, closest to Hanzo. They did not seem particularly weak- but they were clumsy, tripping all over themselves on their first day here, too much so to be explained away by short legs and long bodies. More like they weren’t in complete control of their limbs.

“Can they be removed?” he asked. Flying was dangerous- flying would be almost impossible to contain and control- but the alternative was simply unthinkable.

“It is embedded in his spine and would do serious nerve damage to simply pull it out,” Reinhardt said. “I will run tests on the data, of course, but for now…” He shut the screen down and looked at Frog and sighed, sounding old and weary.

“He wouldn’t have,” Efi said, sounding as though she were speaking to herself. “He wouldn’t have, he was keeping them safe.” She stepped away from the barrier, blinking back tears, and Hanzo said nothing. Keeping them safe would mean keeping them grounded, and if there was no better way to do it, well. Hamilton had been one old man with two big dragons, no omnic to help mind them, no rancher to house them.

Reinhardt followed Hanzo as he moved back through the barrier, still frowning at the scanner in his hand. “I will look into it,” he promised no one in particular.

“Right,” Efi said, and turned to Hanzo. “Can you take me back to the barn? I want to look over the workroom.”

“Of course,” Hanzo said- easy enough to do, and if Hamilton was responsible for this, she would be the best one to figure out how to deactivate the devices. Efi nodded, her expression set and determined, and turned and trotted back towards the main house, putting distance between them to better hide her tears. Hanzo came after her, slowly so as to respect her privacy, Reinhardt beside them.

“It isn’t permanent,” Reinhardt said, still looking tired but not as defeated as before. “It is an alkali-based power source, so the battery will die within a few months.”

“Better to be able to remove it as soon as possible,” Hanzo replied, but he found himself soothed somewhat by that. He could not begin to imagine what it felt like, to have something so fundamental to his nature stripped away because it was _inconvenient_. He wanted it undone.

“We will work on it,” Reinhardt promised again, and nodded ahead, towards Efi’s rigidly set shoulders and painfully straight spine. “Keep an eye on her,” he said, a gentle order.

“Thank you,” Hanzo said- for the advice, for the reassurance that it would be all right in the end, for the promise that he would still try. He hesitated, glanced at Reinhardt out of the corner of his eye, then dared to reach over and pat the other man on the shoulder, an emphasis to his words. Reinhardt smiled but did not return the touch, which Hanzo was even more grateful for- he’d seen how long it had taken McCree to get his breath back after that friendly pat on the back, after all.

“I will see you tomorrow,” Reinhardt said when they were back by the cars, a vague promise without a clear recipient. Efi came over to stand by Hanzo as he left, still wet-eyed and granite-faced.

“We can fix this,” she said, and Hanzo put a hand on her shoulder, a feat both easier and harder than it had been with Reinhardt. She leaned into it instantly. “We can fix this,” she said again, stronger this time.

“We will,” Hanzo agreed. He looked up at the house, hoping against hope that McCree would be there- even with Efi’s residual distrust of him, he would do a far better job of soothing her than Hanzo- but he was gone. He had said he would be busy.

“All right,” Efi said, and pushed away to stand on her own, swiping her hand across her eyes. “Let’s get going, then.”


	8. Chapter 8

The next day dragged on, lost in a mixture of anxiety and mild depression. Hanzo tended to the dragons at the sanctuary with diligence and a hint of regret, spending more time than normal with the friendlier ones, scratching his fingers through their short-tufted manes and smoothing his palm along their scaly flanks. He was doing right by them, at least. He could protect them, keep them healthy and safe, even if he was failing their larger cousins.

He lost himself in his dour mood, focusing on his job and the dragons and trying not to think about anything else, to the point that he forgot. He only remembered when the dragons chittered, and he looked up to see McCree standing at the pens’ gate.

“Bad day?” he asked. 

“Unpleasant,” Hanzo said. He remembered now. He just wasn’t sure if he was still interested in this date anymore.

“Ran into Efi on the ranch, she had a few things to say ‘bout that former friend of hers,” McCree continued. He braced his left arm against the fence post and leaned into it, eyes resting dark and heavy on Hanzo. “She’n Rein are gonna make it better.”

“Of course they are,” Hanzo replied instantly. He could not quite bring himself to meet that knowing gaze, though. He didn’t know why McCree was telling him that, what he had done to make him think he needed the reassurance.

McCree knocked his metal knuckles against the post, causing it to ring tinnily and the fence itself to shiver. “Anyway, she’s babysittin’ the kids tonight, so we’re free to head out whenever you’re ready.”

Hanzo said nothing, just looked away again and made a noise in his throat, a vague hum of acknowledgement. Somehow, McCree read it properly, and added, “...or you can hang out here and sulk about things that ain’t your fault and you can’t change. Your choice.”

“I am not _sulking_ ,” Hanzo grumbled, but he could already feel himself caving. He was tired of feeling helpless and useless and wanted to think about something else for a while.

“Pick your word, then, they all mean the same thing,” McCree said, stepping back as Hanzo disengaged the lock and pushed the gate open.

“I need to get changed,” Hanzo continued, graciously ignoring that.

“You’re fine as is,” McCree said. “ ‘Sides, got a feelin’ if I let ya, you’ll talk yourself right back outta this.”

Hanzo let the gate slam shut and leaned back against it for a moment, drawing patience from its steady support. Then he pushed away from it. “Very well,” he said, and McCree smiled, and that odd warmth from the other day kindled again in Hanzo’s belly.

“Great,” McCree said, and actually held out his arm, like he thought they were in an old movie. “Shall we?”

It almost earned him a smile, but Hanzo covered it with a sigh and a raised eyebrow as he stared at the proffered arm. He came along without protest though, basking in the simple warmth inspired by McCree’s presence as, for the first time all day, he finally started to feel better.

* * *

The _main drag downtown_ , as McCree had optimistically described it, was nothing but a long street that ran through the center of the town with stores and cafes and the occasional bar. Still, it was the town’s main attraction, and it was a surprisingly lively place, with music playing and fairy lights twinkling from awnings and street light poles and people talking and laughing and calling out. It felt almost like a proper city, and it stirred some small twinges of nostalgia for Hanzo.

“So,” McCree said, his gaze focused on the oversized, overstuffed taco in his hand. “Family is a no, and talkin’ about the boys ain’t a good idea out here, so why don’t you tell me what you wanna talk about?”

Hanzo frowned down at his own taco as he considered the answer. It had been listed on the menu at the food truck as the _catfood taco_ , described as catfish and spinach leaves, and had been the only item on the menu not drowning in cheese and heavy cream sauces. He actually liked it, although he was reluctant to admit that to McCree after how long it had taken him to coax Hanzo into trying the taco truck.

“I do not mind talking about my family,” he said. “I just.” He stopped mid-sentence and thought about it, trying to phrase it right.

“All right,” McCree agreed easily. “Start small. Tell me a few things about your brother.”

“Genji,” Hanzo answered. He took a moment to think, trying to decide how to explain Genji to someone who had never experienced him. “He was younger, so he did not have to learn as much responsibility. He was very-”

- _angry_ , he thought, but did not say it, because Genji insisted that was over and Hanzo was forgiven.

“He dyed his hair green,” he settled on.

“Green,” McCree echoed, and nodded towards the taco in Hanzo’s hand, indicating the spinach leaves. “Green like that, or _green_?”

“Bright green,” Hanzo said. “He wore orange once and we called him a carrot for years.”

McCree smirked at that. “Family disappointment, huh?”

“We both were,” Hanzo admitted, and McCree faltered for a moment, eyes wide and worried as he glanced over- but Hanzo waved it off. “It was better for everyone, in the end.”

“So how’s he doing?” McCree asked after a silence that drifted close to awkward territory.

“He lives now with a group of omnic monks in Nepal,” Hanzo said. “He says he has found peace there.”

“Huh.” McCree looked at Hanzo, studying him as though there was something new to be discovered in him. “Funny how you both went the antisocial route, him with his monks and you with your dragons.”

It was meant as a joke, and it would have been a bad one- but Hanzo had gone still, his mind far away, and the words and McCree’s self-loathing grimace passed by unnoticed. He shook himself free of the haze after a moment, glanced around to see if there was anyone close enough to overhear, and grabbed McCree by the forearm and pulled him into the shelter of a shop doorway.

“Nepal is a permanent sanctuary state for noble dragons,” he said quietly, speaking over McCree’s protest, and McCree snapped his mouth shut mid-word.

“That means what it sounds like, right?” he asked, and Hanzo nodded. McCree eased his breath out in a long sigh, some of the tension bleeding off his shoulders, and Hanzo understood. There was a chance, a potential ending that did not include prison for them and death for the dragons.

Someone pointedly cleared their throat from behind McCree, and they shuffled back onto the sidewalk and out of the doorway, letting the person enter the store. Hanzo kept moving down the sidewalk, letting the natural flow of foot traffic around him carry him along. McCree kept pace easily.

“It won’t be that easy, you know,” he said. “They both about lost their minds after a half hour in a trailer, how’re you gonna get ‘em to Asia?”

“There are ways,” Hanzo said. He did not currently know them- his job was to worry about the dragons, after all- but he knew they were out there.

McCree made a noise of agreement and ducked off to the side for a moment, throwing what was left of his taco into a trash can. When he settled back into place beside Hanzo, he was watching him thoughtfully. “You’re smilin’,” he said.

“Am I,” Hanzo said, but- he supposed he was. He could feel it, a strange unfamiliar sensation.

“You really do like those lizards, don’t you?” McCree continued. “I mean, at first I thought it was just ‘cause it’s your job, but.” He grinned and swayed on his next step, nudging Hanzo’s elbow with his own. “This’s makin’ you happy.”

“Yes, it is,” Hanzo said, and returned a thoughtful look of his own. “And you are helping me, although I do not know why.”

“I told ya,” McCree said, ducking his head as if to hide behind the brim of the hat he had left in his car. “Didn’t much care for the thought of someone killin’ ‘em just because they’re inconvenient.”

Hanzo said nothing to that, and instead merely took another bite of his taco. Such an undignified food, but surprisingly good, with tangy sour cream and just enough spice on the catfish.

“And because they remind me of me,” McCree added, his tone reluctant, like Hanzo had forced it out of him. Hanzo glanced over at him, still trying to swallow down his overlarge bite of taco, and McCree grimaced and shrugged. “Angry young cuss, too stupid to be realize how scared he should be, only survivin’ ‘cause someone who really ought to know better has a soft spot for him.”

“That is not how it is,” Hanzo argued, even though it really was.

“Y’know Gabe actually pulled me out of an interrogation room?” McCree asked, far too calm and conversational. “That’s where we met. I was runnin’ with a gang and they hung me out to dry when the feds came knockin’. Gabe told me he could get me outta there, and I said all sorts of nasty things as thanks. He just said _keep ‘em coming, kid, it’s not like I’m the only chance you have of ever seeing daylight again_.”

Hanzo looked away, unable to find the words to protest. Gabriel Reyes sounded like a proper hero, a good man with a good heart. Hanzo had had to be guilted into helping by an eleven-year-old girl. Any similarities were skin-deep at best.

“So, you know, I kinda got a soft spot for ‘em,” McCree concluded. “ ‘Specially Bunny, god help me.”

They were passing another trash can, so Hanzo dropped the last few bites of his taco into it and walked in silence for a few minutes as he thought it through. He would have to call Genji, which would be awkward- Genji insisted on a monthly check-in so they both knew the other was still alive, but Hanzo did not know how to talk to his brother anymore, and it seemed rude to start again by asking for a huge favor.

“At least we have something good to tell Efi,” he said finally, and McCree visibly relaxed, some unknown tension melting off him.

“Yeah, she’s been mopin’ more than you,” he agreed.

“I _am not_ -” Hanzo began, but McCree dug his elbow- his metal elbow, Hanzo was on his left- into Hanzo’s ribs and cut the words short.

“I’m gettin’ one,” he said, pointing ahead towards another truck parked along the curb. It was painted a particularly bright shade of blue and had the words _Cookie Monster_ splashed along the side. “Want something?”

“No,” Hanzo said, still rubbing at his ribs, but he followed McCree to the truck anyways, and ordered a cinnamon spice cookie that ended up being the size of his head. McCree ate his ooey gooey chocolate chewy in chunks and grinned and watched as Hanzo fussed over the paper sleeve that ripped, the cinnamon sugar that spilled everywhere, the cookie itself slowly falling to pieces because it was too warm to hold up under its own weight. Most of it ended up wrapped in a handful of napkins to be eaten later or given to Efi, and by then they had reached the far end of the area, where shops gave way to apartment buildings.

McCree- Jesse, really, it wasn’t like he would mind the familiarity- was smiling to himself, humming under his breath and occasionally allowing his arm to bump Hanzo’s. He seemed to be enjoying himself, and really, Hanzo himself was in a much better mood than he had been earlier. They took a side road back to the parking lot in an easy, companionable silence, until the car was in sight and Jesse bumped into him again.

“Think this went better this time around, huh?” he asked.

“Yes,” Hanzo agreed, although the good mood was souring a bit as reality crept back in. He would have to look up the time difference to Nepal and figure out when was best to call his brother, and then there was the issue of transporting the dragons- Jesse was correct, they would not tolerate any length of time in an enclosed carrier- but then he was bumped again, a proper nudge this time.

“Whatever it is you’re chewin’ on, let it go ‘til tomorrow,” Jesse advised. “Tonight was good. Let it stay that way.”

“Yes,” Hanzo said again, and turned a brief smile on Jesse. “Thank you for this.”

Jesse faltered for a moment, missed a beat and stumbled to catch up again. “Anytime,” he said, and he smiled, but he was staring at Hanzo with widened eyes, like he’d just hit the man. He ducked away, heading around to the other side of the car, and Hanzo frowned at his retreat. He had thought he was being polite.

“So, back to the sanctuary for your car, and I’ll see ya tomorrow?” Jesse asked. He sounded almost normal, like he had almost recovered from whatever had shaken him, so Hanzo allowed him the lie and nodded.

The ride back to the sanctuary was silent. Jesse still seemed relaxed, a strange little smile on his face, eyes focused on the road and hand curled loosely around the steering wheel, and Hanzo had mostly dismissed that strange little moment as a fluke by the end of it. It was warm and comfortable and he found himself enjoying it. It had gone surprisingly well, all things considered. He could forget, at least for this one night, that nothing had actually been solved and it was all still likely to end in disaster.

He smiled again, just for the feeling of it, and let himself enjoy it while it lasted.

* * *

She had thought, when she composed it, that a list with the parameters of _stand-alone building and enough land for dragons_ would have limited her choices to only a small handful of properties, and perhaps had been too strict. She realized, when the list came out to over forty properties, that she had not been nearly strict enough. Still, too many was better than refining her search and eliminating her target by accident, so she gritted her teeth, put on her walking shoes, and got to work.

She had learned from the cool reception she had received at the sanctuary, and she had tailored her look to something a little more wholesomely American. She introduced herself as Amie and smoothed over her accent into something more gentle and unidentifiable. She wore her hair in a braid instead of its normal high ponytail and a pink long-sleeved blouse that hid her tattoo and she smiled, smiled, smiled. It worked well enough to open seven doors, to get her a brief tour around seven properties, to cross seven places off her list.

The eighth was a ranch that belonged to Jesse McCree, and she almost ruled it out from the start. Certainly the cows would not rest easily with a pair of big predators so close. She only went because McCree supplied a good portion of the meat given to the dragons at the sanctuary, so he had at least a passing familiarity with dragons. She went after the end of the work day, trying to catch the rancher in a down time, and pasted on her fake smile as she knocked on the door and stepped back to wait.

And wait.

She gave up after ten minutes and a few more knocks and headed around the house instead. There was no sign of movement, no barking dog charging at her, no alarm system warning of her approach, only a few cows lifting their heads to watch with their dark stupid eyes as she walked past their pastures. They seemed too calm for any dragons to be nearby, and she almost turned away then. But there was a hill towards the back of the property, and when she came near it she thought she could hear music.

It was music, and voices that became clearer as she came up the hill, and she angled her approach so she was walking along the treeline instead of across an open area, where the speakers could so easily spot her. It sounded like a child, she thought, with the occasional reply from an adult with a musical accent that she might be able to place, if she thought about it.

Then she crested the hill, and immediately twisted around and ducked sideways, pressing her spine to a tree and waiting, tensing, preparing- but there was nothing, save the child and the music and the grumbling of a large dragon.

She peeked after a few moments, and eased out of her hiding spot after a minute or two, gently picking her way through the trees to get a better vantage sight. The child was sitting on a fence, swinging her feet happily as she chatted at the dragon curled close to her. There was the other one in the distance, up near a dilapidated old building. Blue-on-blue and gold-on-blue, like she’d been told. She had not, however, been warned about the large omnic pacing along an invisible line through the field. And she could not see it, not yet, but there had to be a containment field of some sort keeping the dragons in place.

She ducked back into the trees as the omnic approached. The omnic went by peacefully, unaware of her, its attention focused mostly on the dragon nearest the child. She watched it go, tracing its route with a calculating gaze, trying to gauge the circumference of the field they were using. Any sort of particle-based shielding would be just as difficult to break into as it would be to break out, but the bigger an area it had to cover, the more scattered the actual particles would be. Anything small and sufficiently high-velocity would be able to pass through unimpeded.

The dragon near the building turned its head suddenly to stare directly at her, and she froze. She had forgotten- out in the open, with room to move, the dragons were a real threat here. She waited, hardly daring to breathe, until the dragon turned away again. Then she backed away, slowly and quietly easing herself through the trees until she broke suddenly back into the cattle fields, probably but not certainly out of eyesight from the old building up the hill.

She would need something heavier than her current weapon to get through any shielding without problems, and she would need to figure out how to get past that omnic. And then there was the issue of the dragons themselves.

She started walking again, quickly, putting distance between herself and the dragons, her mind racing ahead. She was smiling for real now.

This just got fun.


	9. Chapter 9

The hoarse roar of a gas engine announced Morrison’s presence long before the man himself appeared, riding that ridiculous antique motorcycle up the long drive and taking the turn into the parking lot far too tightly. He pulled into the spot beside Hanzo, who had arrived himself only moments before, and turned his helmeted head to study him as he shut the engine down.

“You are late,” Hanzo said. He couldn’t walk away now without being unconscionably rude, so he went for distraction instead.

“I got held up,” Morrison replied, then pulled the helmet off. He pushed a hand through his hair and glanced again at Hanzo. “Three of our neighbors were sitting at the kitchen table when I got up this morning, and Gabriel wasn’t threatening to shoot them if they didn’t leave, so I had to stay and chat for a few minutes.” He said _chat_ like it was some form of torture he had bravely endured.

“Oh,” Hanzo said vaguely, thinking of Efi’s mother and her knitting circle. Well, she did warn them.

“Yeah,” Morrison said with an unhappy grimace. “Honestly, Shimada, the less I know about you and Jesse, the better for both of us.”

“I agree,” Hanzo said at once, and turned away, heading towards the building. Morrison caught up easily in a few long-legged strides and settled into place beside him. So it wasn’t actually over yet.

“Gabriel had a few questions though,” Morrison said. “He might be dropping by sometime.”

There was something ominous in the way he said that, the implication in his simple words and his too-calm tone that Hanzo could expect this man to jump out at him from the shadows and demand to know his intentions. And given what Hanzo had seen of the man himself and the secondhand descriptions he had gotten from Jesse and Morrison, he might well do exactly that.

“I look forward to it,” he said, because there was no point in trying to escape now.

Apparently considering their conversation over, Morrison sped up again, and Hanzo trailed along in his wake. He was paying so little attention to where they were going that he followed Morrison into the man’s office, stopping only when he literally walked into him.

“You need something else?” Morrison asked as he unzipped his jacket.

“Yes,” Hanzo decided after a moment. “How do we transport dragons?”

“Dog kennels, if they’re small enough and they’re not going far,” Morrison replied. “Otherwise we have specially made carriers. Can’t have solid sides or they panic.”

“They need to be able to see,” Hanzo mused. No sedation, but he had expected as much- drugging a dragon was a good way to destroy any trust. “And if they are too large for carriers?”

“They’re designed for dragons up to twenty feet long, which is only twice the average size of a lesser dragon,” Morrison said impatiently, stepping forward and herding Hanzo back out into the hallway so he could make his way over to the coffeemaker sitting on a nearby countertop. “What are you planning on moving here?”

“Nothing,” Hanzo said immediately, and then faltered. “It was- something McCree asked about last night.”

Morrison gave him an odd look at that, which was fair enough. It was a bad lie. He took another step back. “I need to go,” he said, hating the awkwardness rising up, the defensiveness.

“Sure,” Morrison agreed. “Good luck with Gabriel.”

Hanzo hesitated at that, glancing back to see the man smirking down into his mug, then turned away again. Gabriel Reyes was far from the scariest thing he’d faced. He would handle it, if it became an issue. He still had a long list of things to do, not the least of which was his actual job. Overprotective father figures could wait.

He double-checked that the area was clear before he headed outside anyway, just in case.

* * *

Orisa was the only one with the dragons when Jesse got done with his daily chores and headed up the hill the evening after his first-second date with Hanzo. Which was good, because she was the one he most needed to talk to.

“This’s your fault, you know,” he told her as he tossed chunks of steak into the field. The dragons wouldn’t need another big meal for a few weeks at least, but food bribery was a good way to make them friendlier, and they snapped up the steaks and bullied each other around the field happily enough.

“My apologies,” Orisa said without hesitation. Then she tilted her head at him, clearly thinking. “What is my fault?”

“You and your _romantic compatibility_ ,” he grumbled, and threw a t-bone as hard as he could. Bunny used Frog as a launching pad and snatched it out of the air, then swallowed it down without so much as a courtesy chew and settled back into place next to his brother, waiting for the next throw. “We were doin’ good enough just being friendly, and then you go and say somethin’ like _that_.”

“So have you decided you are-?” Orisa began, but Jesse groaned loud enough to drown her out.

“Look,” he said, and dumped the rest of the steaks out onto the grass directly in front of him, and realized half a second later the mistake he had just made. Fortunately Orisa was quick on the draw, and caught Jesse by the collar of his shirt and yanked him away before he was smeared into paste by stampeding dragons. He waited until they were well clear of the scrum before shaking her off and pulling his shirt back down from where it had bunched up at his throat. “Look, I just need to sort this one out on my own, okay? Not that you and Efi aren’t great, but…” And he shrugged, unable to put it into words.

“I understand,” Orisa said gently. “May I recommend you work it out quickly? Mister Hanzo has just arrived.”

Jesse looked, but of course he couldn’t see anything. Hanzo always parked at the house. “Right, thanks,” he said, and Orisa drifted off, giving him privacy.

It wasn’t her fault, was the thing- it was that smile Hanzo had had, when he’d been watching the dragons roam around the field, and the smile he’d had last night when he had said _thank you for this_ , and how Jesse had wanted nothing more than to lean unthinking into that solid steady warmth and press a _you’re welcome_ into dark hair. It was Jesse’s fault for finding cracks in the armor of icy politeness Hanzo wore and thinking they were for him. Orisa might have said the words, but Jesse was already nursing a crush. She’d just shone a light on it.

There was a noise, a scuffing of feet on grass, and Jesse looked over to see Hanzo on the other side of the barrier, watching the dragons squabble over the last piece of meat. He moved so quietly Jesse likely would’ve jumped right out of his skin if he hadn’t had Orisa’s warning. His face was soft again, softer than normal, and Jesse felt a funny little tingle under his skin that could become proper butterflies in his stomach if he didn’t check himself.

“Good evening,” Hanzo said. He sounded distracted, but when he looked at Jesse he smiled again, and that wasn’t helping anything.

“Evenin’,” Jesse replied. “Somethin’ wrong?”

Hanzo started to shake his head, then seemed to reconsider. “I had a talk with Morrison today,” he said. “He seems to believe I will be getting a visit from Gabriel sometime soon.”

“Shit,” Jesse breathed out, scraping his hand down his face. “No, he- Gabe does that. First time I brought someone home, he ran ‘em off with his shovel talk. Only with him, it ain’t a shovel, it’s a shotgun.”

“Should I be worried?” Hanzo asked. He didn’t particularly sound worried, which- he’d probably faced down scarier things than good ol’ Papa Bear Reyes before he hit puberty. He sounded considering, like he was trying to figure out his lines and his reactions in case Gabe did corner him.

“Nah,” Jesse said, waving it off. “We’ll just hafta spin it so it it looks like the break up’s all my fault, is all.”

It happened fast, like a gear shift on an antique car, just a single stuttered heartbeat between one and the next. Hanzo’s face fell- fell, hah, plunged off a cliff- but then the shutters were back up and he was as cool and composed as always. But for that one brief moment-

“You forgot,” Jesse said, almost to himself, and Hanzo gave him a politely confused look. “That we were breakin’ up at the end of this.”

“I did not forget,” Hanzo said, but there was that stutter again, that brief failure in his stony mask. “I was not aware we were together.”

“Yeah,” Jesse agreed. He ducked his head, letting the shade from the brim of his hat fall across his eyes, and rubbed at the back of his neck.

_Romantic compatibility_ , Orisa said in his head, and he wanted to scream. He kinda hated her a lot right now.

“We could be,” he heard someone say, someone with his voice, while he was busy shushing his inner Orisa. To his horror, it didn’t stop there. “I mean, nothin’ would change, really, and it seems like somethin’ we both kinda want. Nothin’ too serious, just, y’know, the normal dating thing.”

It was bad, Jesse realized as soon as that voice-stealer stopped talking. Hanzo’s eyes went wide and flicked away as though looking for an escape, and he rocked his weight back as if preparing to bolt, and for him that was as good as screaming and running. And instead of doing the smart thing, like taking it back or trying to ease off the pressure, Jesse just stood there like an idiot, waiting for a response that very obviously was not gonna be good.

“I will consider it,” Hanzo said, his voice as cool and even as always even while every other inch of him screamed _run away_. “I am not-” and he stopped himself, rethought his words, started again. “I have not done the normal dating thing in several years. I will think about it.”

“Right,” Jesse agreed, feeling stupid and useless.

Hanzo stared at him for a few moments, then looked away again when Jesse looked over. “I need to go,” he said. “I only came to see how they were doing.” And he waved a hand towards the dragons, Bunny off in the distance and Frog with his nose stuffed into the plastic tub Jesse had carried the steaks in like a dog cleaning off an unattended dinner plate, scooting it across the grass as he scrounged.

“Right,” Jesse said again. “So I’ll be seein’ you around, then?” _You’re coming back, right_ , he didn’t ask. _Tell me I didn’t chase you away, we still need you, please don’t leave_.

“Of course,” Hanzo said, and it was something, at least. Not that Jesse really thought he’d abandon the dragons or Efi, but it was still good to hear. He gave a nod and walked away, and Jesse watched him go with a sigh.

“I take it back,” he said to Orisa, who- because that whole thing hadn’t been bad enough by itself- had no doubt heard every word. “You did nothing wrong. That was all on me.”

Orisa moved closer and, with delicate precision, took Jesse’s hat off. Then she patted him on the head with her other hand. “There, there,” she said, and did her ridiculous smile in the face of Jesse’s sour glare.

Then a particularly enthusiastic shove from Frog sent the plastic tub into the back of Jesse’s knees and he went down hard, and then spent the next twenty minutes soothing a cranky dragon with a sore nose, and by the time that was handled he decided the best thing to do was just go to bed and pretend the whole day hadn’t happened.

* * *

She never came to a job armed.

It was a security issue, partly- she looked pretty and girly and not at all like a threat, but security on most major transportation hubs was too tight for her to slip through the sort of weapons she prefered- but mostly it was because of the challenge of providing for herself. She liked finding contacts and sounding out the darkest corners in even the brightest cities, and if that meant she got her supplies in every possible manner between ordering them off a digital catalog while having tea in a garden to picking them out of the trunk of a car with the seller watching for police, well. It was all a part of the job.

She was closer to the car trunk end of the scale for this one. She’d had a phone conversation with a seller she was reasonably certain would not try to screw her over and planned to meet with him at a time and location not yet decided- she would provide the time, he the location. The job called for some specific firepower this time, something high velocity but no fancy tech the shield might interfere with, and big enough to incapacitate or kill a dragon in one hit, because she had no interest in a direct confrontation with one of those things. But before she put any money down, she first had to make sure she knew what she was up against.

Which was how she found herself back at the farm house, sorting through the cluttered rooms in search of clues on the shielding device. For someone who worked with such advanced technology, Hamilton hadn’t seemed to trust it much, and had prefered writing everything down to actually using a computer of some sort. She was in what had once been the dining room but had long ago been converted into a workshop, sorting through stacks of paper napkins and receipts with ideas and blueprints scratched onto them by the crazy hoarder man, when her phone chirped. She answered it unthinking, just the click of connection and dead silence as she said nothing, assuming it was her supplier.

“Any progress?” her client asked, and she nearly hung up on him.

She knew better than to give away too much- someone who had the connections and the resources to hire her could easily hire someone else to follow her and sneak her contract right out from under her. “Yes,” she said simply.

The man was silent for a moment, then sighed loudly, as though she were the annoying one. “Have you found them yet?”

She had found something, a tablet with bright-colored stickers on its case that did not match the drabness that the house’s owner had clearly appreciated. She picked it up and turned it on, and it blinked a lock screen at her, asking for the password. She set it aside and started searching through the papers that had been under the tablet.

“I am making progress,” she said, because she had to give him something. “I have found the people who moved the dragons.”

“Oh? Any guess on how much longer?”

There was a paper near the top of the pile that caught her attention- half the writing on it was in a different hand than the rest, the letters boxy and carefully precise instead of loose and flowing into each other. She held it up, studied the design drawn on it, then looked at the papers in the stack below it.

Particle barrier generators, like she’d thought. And with the plans she had there and an estimate of the area covered by the shield, she could calculate how much force a bullet would need to break through and still be going fast enough to kill a dragon. One call from her supplier, and she would get this job done and get out of this smelly little town.

“Three days,” she said, and then she did hang up on him, and carefully folded the papers over so the folds weren’t crossing anything important.

Three days, and this would be done.

* * *

Hanzo’s house had a guest bedroom, empty of furniture and completely unused, remarkable only for the hardshell cello case propped up in the closet. The day after Jesse asked him to- the day after McCree asked, Hanzo went into the guest bedroom and laid the cello case flat on the floor and opened it. The flat lighting of the overhead lamp shone dully off the metal body, and Hanzo ran his hand reverentially down the gentle slope of the upper arm. Then he gripped the handle properly and stood, lifting the bow up with him.

He had a practice bow, of course, similar enough in draw weight and balance to keep him in good form. Storm Bow had tasted blood, and not for sport, so it burned against his hand sometimes, stirred memories he was not prepared to face. But he missed it too, familiar and comforting as an old friend who knew all his darkest secrets. He brought it out when his mind needed clearing.

He held it up, settled it into place, hooked two fingers against the string and drew it back until his knuckles were brushing his cheekbone. He relaxed again instead of letting go, kicked the cello case shut and tucked the bow under one arm, headed out of the room and back downstairs.

His phone was sitting on the kitchen table, its screen still active with recent use. He scooped it up and pulled up his contact list and hit Call on the second of three numbers on the list, not giving himself time to hesitate or change his mind, the comforting pressure of Storm Bow against his arm keeping him anchored against the panic that tried to swamp him as the ringing started.

He had just enough time to think that maybe- there was an appreciable time difference, why had he not thought of that?- and he was about to hang up when the call connected with a burst of static.

“Brother!” Genji said, his voice warped by the bad connection and muffled by the overpowering whistle of wind in the background. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Hanzo said instantly. He set Storm Bow down on the table and braced his hand against it. “Hello, Genji.”

“You called to say hello?” Genji asked. There was a clatter and a thump and the sound of wind cut off, Genji’s voice strangely loud and echoing in the sudden silence. “How very unlike you.”

It was meant to be a joke, probably, with a hidden knife’s-edge of truth, because it was true. It stung like a slap to the face, and if it had been anybody else, Hanzo would have said goodbye and hung up and never called them again. But it was Genji, and he deserved to take all the cheap shots he wanted.

“It’s going to be like that, then?” Genji asked, when Hanzo let the silence drag on too long. He sounded wistful, like he knew better than to be upset but had nonetheless hoped for better.

“I apologize,” Hanzo said stiffly, his hand curling tight around the bow. “I should not have disturbed you.”

“No,” Genji said immediately. “Hanzo, don’t you dare hang up on me- hey! I’ll come out there if I have to, you know I will!”

Hanzo stopped, phone lowered and thumb hovering over the End Call button. He slowly brought it back up, not speaking, just listening to his brother breathe over the line. They had no other choice, there was no other way the dragons made it out of this alive. He could do this for them. He had to.

“Whatever you need, brother, you only have to ask,” Genji said calmly. “The worst I can do is say no.”

“The line is secure?” Hanzo asked.

“Of course,” Genji said, sounding insulted. “Why?”

“I need a favor,” Hanzo said, still trying to piece his words together. He would have done better to plan this conversation out, but if he had, he would have talked out of calling altogether. “I have two dragons who need relocating to a sanctuary state.”

“Okay,” Genji replied. “Don’t you work at a sanctuary? What’s so special about these two that they need-?”

Hanzo said nothing and just waited. He could almost hear it click into place- a sudden silence, a sharp-drawn breath.

“Noble dragons,” Genji said, whispering now, as though that would make any sort of difference. “You have _noble dragons_ there?”

“Yes.”

Genji said something in a language Hanzo did not recognize, his tone a swear. “ _How_?” he demanded.

“I seem to have inherited them,” Hanzo said wryly, the words coming easier now. “I cannot keep them, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Genji agreed sarcastically. “Do you think someone might notice the two giant dragons stuffed into your garage?”

“They’re on a ranch, and they are not giant. They are adolescent.” Hanzo released his white-knuckled grip on the bow and smoothed his fingers across it instead. “Would the monks be willing to take them in?”

“Yes, of course they would, they love the dragons,” Genji said. “But why do _you_ have them? And how would you get them here? And what ranch?”

“The rancher that supplies my sanctuary with meat found out about the dragons and offered use of his land to house them,” Hanzo explained. “And I had no idea on how to move them. I needed first to be sure we had somewhere to move them to.”

“Did you think I would say no?” Genji asked, and then, “You thought I would say no because it’s you asking. Hanzo-”

“I will have to speak to Jesse to see if he has any ideas on transportation,” Hanzo interrupted, but paused when Genji made a questioning noise.

“Jesse?” he echoed. “You call him by his first name?”

This entire phone call had clearly been a mistake. “I call many people by their first name,” he said, cursing himself and Genji both, feeling a familiar heat spreading across his cheeks. How wonderful that Genji had not lost his unerring aim for Hanzo’s most embarrassing secrets.

“Since when?” Genji asked on a laugh. “No, don’t try to answer that. I’m happy for you, Hanzo.”

Hanzo wanted dearly to deny it- what was there to be happy about? But instead he said nothing, his mouth helpfully staying shut instead of giving voice to protests.

“I will speak to the elders, but I can’t imagine they’d say no,” Genji continued. “Call me again when you have a better idea of transportation. Or if you want to tell me about Jesse-”

“Our parents promised me you would outgrow this,” Hanzo accused, and Genji was still laughing when he hung up on him. 

Hanzo set the phone on the table and picked up the bow, went into the coat closet to retrieve a quiver full of arrows. Then he grabbed his phone and his keys and headed out to go shoot some targets and, hopefully, clear his mind.


	10. Chapter 10

The third day after Hanzo- not ran away, he wasn’t calling it that, he just needed space to think- Jesse came downstairs in the morning to the glorious smell of eggs and spices. He headed into the kitchen and straight to the coffee maker, pouring himself a cup and taking a sip of it black.

“So what’d I do to earn this?” he asked, and Gabe grunted at him, still busy with the eggs.

“Have to ask you something,” he said without looking up. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No,” Jesse said immediately, honestly offended by the question. “Did I do somethin’ to make you think I did?”

Gabe pulled the pan off the stove and set it aside and leaned back against the counter, arms folded across his chest and stern frown on his face. “Trickier question then. You think Jack’s stupid?”

Jesse took a moment to answer that one, disguising his pause by sipping at his coffee again. “Not as such,” he settled on finally. He’d made his peace with Jack a long time ago, but it was hard nevertheless to overlook years of finding fault with everything the man did. 

“Good,” Gabe said, and took the pan up again. “Went up to the back field a few minutes ago.”

He didn’t have any coffee in his mouth, so he didn’t choke on it. It still took a moment of blind panic, and then another of realizing why panicking would be hard to explain, for Jesse to respond. “Did you now? Any particular reason?”

Gabe gave him a fondly patronizing roll of the eyes. “Kid,” he said in his very best _explaining things to idiots_ voice, “why do you think a man like Robert Hamilton had those monsters squirrelled away in his barn in the first place?”

Jesse drank some coffee and chewed on that one for a moment. Honestly, it wasn’t as much of a shock as he might’ve thought it’d be- Gabe in particular played fast and loose with other people’s rules. “You brought ‘em here?”

“Yes and no,” Gabe said, carefully sliding the eggs off onto two tortillas. He scooped a spoonful of salsa over each egg and pushed one plate towards Jesse. “Don’t know how Hamilton got his hands on them, I just know they came from a collector. They weren’t part of the collection yet because they weren’t big enough to be impressive, so someone snuck them out and got them to him. He told Jack and me they were coming, but he thought it’d be a couple of months from now still, and then he passed away and we thought it fell through.”

Jesse took a fork from the silverware drawer and stabbed at the egg, watching the runny yolk bleed out over the salsa. “And then?” he asked.

“Then Jack came home a couple days ago asking when was the last time I’d checked on the Hamilton property, and when I saw those tire tracks you left behind I said to myself, I know a fool with a lot of land who’d be taken in by a sob story.”

Jesse dropped his plate onto the counter with a loud clatter, salsa splashing over the edge with the abrupt motion. “Why the hell didn’t you say anythin’?” he demanded. “We coulda used your help about eight times over.”

“Why didn’t _you_?” Gabe countered. “You seriously think I would have turned them in? You should’ve known better, kid.”

There was nothing to say to that, so Jesse stewed in silence for a while, halfheartedly picking at the plate of eggs since Gabe would happily force-feed it to him if he let it go to waste.

“All right,” he said a few minutes later, when he’d had the chance to recover mostly from his indignation. “So what was the plan? ‘Cause this’s the part we’re gettin’ hung up on, what to do now.”

“We had ideas, not a plan,” Gabe said. “We thought we had more time. What’s Shimada thinking?”

Jesse decided not to ask why he thought Hanzo might be involved, since he didn’t need another lecture or any more landmine questions about his opinion of Gabe’s intelligence. “His brother lives in Nepal, he’s s’posed to be callin’ him.”

“Good,” Gabe said with a nod. “Eat your damn food or leave it alone, I didn’t make it so you could play with it.”

They ate in silence, Jesse at least having run out of words and having no idea where to go from here. It had honestly never occurred to him that Jack and Gabe might have been in on it, but it should have. At the very least, he should’ve been willing to take a risk and ask for help, and known they wouldn’t rat him out even if they didn’t agree.

“So, you got ideas?” he asked when breakfast was done and he was washing salsa off his plate because Gabe didn’t believe in using a dishwasher when a little bit of soap and elbow grease would get the job done.

“Got an old friend who said she’d help.” Gabe, the helpful bastard, dropped his own plate into the sink to be washed next, blithely ignoring the scowl Jesse gave him. “I’ll have Jack give her a call. They are good to travel, right?”

“Sure,” Jesse agreed. “Got ‘em here, didn’t we?”

“Yeah? And how’d that go?” Gabe asked, and Jesse hesitated. Not well, truth be told- Frog had been a dream but Bunny nearly tipped the trailer a half dozen times. He imagined that on a transport plane and shuddered a little.

“They do better together,” he said. “And the cranky one likes Hanzo just fine, so as long as they’ve got him, they should be okay.”

“Gonna need better than a _maybe_ , kid,” Gabe said. “Are they even safe to be around? For someone they don’t know,” he amended when Jesse started to answer too fast.

Jesse thought about that one for a moment, then grinned at Gabe, who scowled in instinctive response. “We can go find out.”

Twenty minutes later, Frog was staring down at Gabe, who in turn was staring at Orisa. She’d seen him in the field earlier and had avoided him, and now stood nearby somehow giving the impression of fretting.

“Is this the cranky one?” Gabe asked, pointing at Frog but still side-eyeing Orisa pretty hard. She was a lot to take in without prior warning, so Jesse let it go.

“Nah, that’s Bunny,” he said, and pointed towards the blue coil glaring at them from near the building. “This’s Frog, he’s the nice one.”

That got Gabe to look away from Orisa, at least, an incredulous look on his face. “Frog and Bunny?”

“Eleven-year-old got naming rights, what can ya do,” Jesse said with a shrug. “And that’s Orisa, the reason this whole thing works in the first place.”

“Hello,” Orisa said with a polite little wave when Gabe looked at her again. “I do not believe this is wise,” she told Jesse sternly.

“Relax, it’s been at least a week since Bunny tried to kill me last,” Jesse told her with a bright grin, which he turned next towards Gabe. “Ready?”

Gabe was stone-faced, eyes cold and sharp, his soldier’s mask. He nodded once, and Jesse stepped forward and activated his disruptor and stepped through the barrier, Gabe on his heels. Frog made a grumbling noise low in his long throat and dipped his head instantly, nosing at Gabe with curiosity. Gabe planted a hand on his snout and pushed his head away, and Frog went with it easily, sitting back a little and minding Gabe’s space. A surprisingly polite dragon- although he’d had Orisa to learn from, and she could probably do some damage if she wanted to.

“See? They’re good.” Jesse gave Frog a hearty slap on the neck, his palm stinging with the impact. Frog grumbled again and turned away, clearly losing interest. Bunny had closed distance and was halfway across the field and watching Gabe’s every move, but he wasn’t snarling or charging at him, which really was the best they could’ve asked from him.

“You think they’re safe for transporting?” Gabe asked, looking not at Jesse, but Orisa.

Orisa looked first at Jesse, staunchly loyal. He waved her on, encouraging her, and she turned back to Gabe. “With proper oversight, I believe so,” she said. “They behave better for Mister Hanzo and Miss Efi.”

“Miss Efi being the eleven-year-old?” Gabe asked, and turned a disapproving glower on Jesse. “And how did a kid get involved with this in the first place?”

“Hey, it ain’t my fault,” Jesse protested. “Efi and Hamilton were nerd buddies, she’s the reason these two ain’t starvin’ in that barn even now.”

Gabe stared at Bunny, who stared back with his unblinking predator’s gaze. Still no growling or lunging, and Jesse was calling this an unqualified success. He had inched closer, curled now in an arc around his brother, close enough that he would only have to stretch his neck out to reach the two humans. He was still doing nothing besides watching very closely.

“All right,” Gabe said, and Jesse let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “I’ll call Jack, see if he’s talked to our contact yet.”

“Do I know ‘em?” Jesse asked, curious, and Gabe offered him a grin that showed way too many teeth and ignored the question entirely as he moved away and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Which could mean just about anything, really.

“I’m probably gonna be busy all today,” Jesse told Orisa. “We’re s’posed to get a big storm tonight, so if Efi shows up, make sure she’s gone before then, a’right?”

“Of course,” Orisa agreed. “Should I tell Mister Hanzo anything, if he comes here?”

It was the closest she’d come to asking about his absence. Efi had been plenty happy to blame Jesse, and was still pointedly refusing to speak to him, but Orisa went for playing dumb instead.

“Nah,” Jesse said. “I gotta figure that one out for myself. Thanks, though.”

“Hey,” Gabe called, and when Jesse looked over, he jerked his chin in a _come here_ gesture. “When’s the earliest you can clock out today?” he asked when Jesse ambled over.

“Probably about noon. Your contact want somethin’?”

“To meet, and you’re invited.” Gabe rapped his knuckles against the barrier, making it flicker. “So be ready to go at one.”

“Sure,” Jesse agreed, although it hadn’t sounded like an offer so much as it had an order. He ambled after Gabe, activating the disruptor and following him beyond the barrier. He gave Orisa a wave farewell and took to Gabe’s heels.

“You think we can do this?” he asked, head low, hat shielding his eyes. Gabe had never lied to him just to protect his feelings before, and now would be a shitty time to start.

“Kind of have to at this point, kid,” Gabe said wryly. “I’m not letting this all end in tragedy. You’re too invested in this.”

“Am not,” Jesse protested instantly. “I don’t even like those lizards. You know the mean one tried to kill me?”

“Oh?” Gabe said, all polite interest. “Then why are you doing all this?”

“Same reasons you are, can’t just let ‘em die,” Jesse said warily, ready to break off and run for it.

“Really,” Gabe said calmly. “Because I was thinking it had something to do with Shimada.”

“No,” Jesse replied instantly, almost before Gabe finished talking, and could have kicked himself. That wasn’t at all suspicious.

“Apparently you two were hitting it off pretty well downtown the other night-”

“It ain’t like that,” Jesse interrupted, and jerked his hat down lower, trying to hide the furious blush staining his cheeks.

“Of course not,” Gabe agreed, but he was grinning bright and savage, and Jesse was having flashbacks to age seventeen, when Gabe had somehow figured out Jesse was nursing his very first crush even before Jesse himself.

“All right, old man, I got crap to do if I’m gonna be gone by one,” Jesse said. “Feel free to get your ass off my property.”

Gabe was still laughing when he made it to the barn and slammed the door shut behind him.

* * *

He called Hanzo at twelve forty-five, since this was not a conversation he wanted to have while trapped in a car with Gabe or Jack or, far worse, Gabe _and_ Jack. He worried at first that Hanzo would not answer, but he called anyways. This was something they needed to decide on together, them two and even Efi.

He was rewarded after two rings by a click, a brief silence, a polite, “Yes?”

“You good to talk?” Jesse asked, turning to look over his shoulder. Across the field Orisa was overseeing Jack’s first meeting with the dragons. Frog was being his usual flirty self, but Bunny was still playing ice queen, watching them from just close enough to strike at them if need be. Jack was doing an admirable job of pretending there was only one dragon in the field, while Gabe was engaged in a staring contest with Bunny like the alpha male posers they both were.

“Yes,” Hanzo said again, but in a radically different tone, alert and ready. “Is something wrong?”

“Depends on your definition of _wrong_ ,” Jesse said, and hurried to explain at the impatient noise Hanzo made. “Woke up this mornin’ to Gabe in my kitchen, makin’ me breakfast and askin’ how dumb I thought he was. Then he told me he’d been up to the back field.”

Hanzo made no sound, not even breathing for a moment. Jesse took that as a sign to continue.

“He said he and Jack were planning on helpin’ Hamilton with the dragons,” he said. “Rescued ‘em from a collector. But he got ‘em early, and died before he could tell Gabe about it.”

“He had a seizure,” Hanzo said quietly. “Efi told me the house has a monitoring system and it alerted the authorities. He used it to send a message to her before he passed away.”

“Didn’t have Gabe’s number on hand?” Jesse asked, and answered his own question. “Right, ‘cause why would he.” They snatched the dragons away from a collector, which implied someone with money and power and questionable enough morals to be willing to break a few laws to get the dragons back. Presumably Gabe took some steps to hide their connection to Hamilton, which would include not being on the man’s speed dial. It would have been easy enough for Hamilton to initiate contact on his own, as simple as driving out to the sanctuary and asking to talk to the president.

“Anyway,” Jesse said, dragging the conversation back on track, “Gabe said they have a contact who was willin’ to help transport these beasts. We’re gonna head out in a few minutes to go see if they’re still up for it.”

Hanzo seemed to consider that one for a moment, probably trying to figure out what was safe to talk about. Jesse wanted to apologize, to take it back, to promise he hadn’t meant it- better to have Hanzo as a friend than nothing at all- but he held his tongue. Trying to take it all back now would just be an insult to them both.

“How long will you be gone?” he asked finally.

“ ‘Til late tomorrow, at least,” Jesse said. “S’posed to be a big storm rollin’ in this evenin’, I told Orisa to send Efi back home if she comes here. Can you swing by to check up on ‘em tonight?”

“Of course,” Hanzo replied instantly, and Jesse tried not to take it too personal that Hanzo was so willing to come by when Jesse himself was guaranteed to be gone.

“Thanks,” he said. “See you later?”

He realized, about ten seconds too late, how loaded that question was. It didn’t help that Hanzo didn’t say anything for twice that long.

“Yes,” he said finally, and Jesse hung up before he could do any more damage. He turned his phone off, shoved it into his pocket, pulled it back out and turned it on again- he couldn’t afford to be out of contact in case something went wrong. He was just gonna have to do the mature thing and deal with this inconvenient little crush.

“That your boy?” Gabe asked from right behind him, and Jesse startled badly and nearly threw his phone out of reflex.

“Yeah,” he said, giving the old man a sour glare before glancing over to check on the others. Frog was gone, probably bored with the whole thing, and Bunny had retreated to a safer distance, and Orisa and Jack were outside the barrier and very obviously not coming over. Subtle as a brick to the face, both of them.

“Things not going well with you two?” Gabe continued.

“We aren’t havin’ this conversation,” Jesse informed him casually. “Since you’re just about the crappiest role model possible, I won’t be needin’ advice from you.”

“I’ve been happily married almost twenty years, boy,” Gabe said, and his tone was smooth and almost amused but it still struck a chord of fear deep in Jesse.

“Right,” Jesse agreed, because he was not one to bow to fear. “So it only took you two, what, fifteen years to sort yourselves out before that? We’re doin’ pretty good, in comparison.”

“He’s not wrong,” Jack said as he casually ambled up to them, hands tucked into his pockets and toes kicking at pebbles in the grass like he was a little kid instead of a retired soldier well into his sixties. “Besides, Shimada doesn’t strike me as someone easy to manage. Best to let them figure this out themselves, if they’re gonna try to make something of it.”

“I’m still here,” Jesse protested.

“Fine,” Gabe allowed. “We ready to go?”

Jesse hesitated a moment, looking back up the hill, looking at Orisa and what he could see of the dragons. It would be the first time since his guests arrived that he’d be gone from the ranch for more than just a couple hours. It didn’t feel right.

“Yeah,” he said finally, turning away. Nothing was going to go wrong- Orisa was there, and Hanzo would be dropping by, and he trusted them to handle themselves. It was only one day, no different from those that came before. Nothing to worry about.

Nothing to worry about.

* * *

The house they came to, after almost four hours of hell in the backseat of a fathers and son road trip, was charmingly small, with a well-tended garden and gauzy curtains drifting in the soft breeze coming through the open windows. It looked like the sort of place where the kitchen cabinets would be summer-sky-blue and there would be a tasteful theme of chickens or cows running throughout the overall decor.

“This’s your contact’s place?” Jesse asked, leaving off kicking the back of Jack’s chair at random intervals so he could lean over and stare out the window.

“She’s gonna eat you alive, kid,” Gabe said fondly as he pulled into the driveway.

The woman who answered the door when Jack knocked looked more like a kindly grandmother who spent her afternoons baking cookies- thick white braid, wrinkles carved into her face, the eye not covered by an eyepatch twinkling with good humor. She smiled warmly and drew Jack and Gabe both into a hug, one after the other.

“Afternoon, boys,” she said, an accent softening the edges of her words. She spared a smile for Jesse and took his hand in hers. Her grip was strong, and Jesse knew gun calluses when he felt them, and he began to reconsider his initial opinion. “Ana Amari.”

“Jesse McCree,” Jesse replied, pouring on all the charm he possessed, wishing Gabe hadn’t made him leave his hat in the car so he could tip it to her like a proper gentleman. “It’s a pleasure.”

She tilted her head to study him better and hummed thoughtfully. “Not what I was expecting,” she said.

“He was like that when I got him, I did what damage control I could,” Gabe said, and stepped past Ana with a swift peck on her cheek. Jack slipped past her with the same gesture- clearly a her thing, since neither one of them were the kiss-on-the-cheek sort- and Ana smiled at Jesse again and released his hand and stepped away, inviting him in without the formality.

It was a small vindication to see her kitchen cabinets were painted blue. No decor theme though, which Jesse really couldn’t bring himself to regret.

“So,” Ana said, setting a kettle to boil on the stove as the men arranged themselves around the kitchen table. “Jack told me you will need my help after all.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gabe said, his tone genuinely fond and not at all the false sugary sweetness he typically used on older women.

“So they are safe?” Ana asked, her one eye sharp as a blade as it rested on each of them in measured turn. When she got three positive responses, she sighed and smiled, allowing herself to collapse back against the counter behind her. “Well. That is good news. Tea?”

There was awkward small talk while Ana poured out the tea, Jack and Gabe telling her how their lives were going, Jesse sitting awkwardly at the table feeling somehow like a fifth wheel in this group of four. It fell off into thoughtful silence after Ana took a seat and they all had at least one polite sip of tea- Gabe in particular seemed unhappy with it, his nose wrinkling as he swallowed like a child being asked to eat a plateful of brussel sprouts. Finally Jesse, working off the increasingly obvious glares he kept getting from the two older men, felt compelled to speak.

“They’re on my ranch,” he said. “Healthy and- well. One’s happy, one’s still kinda grumpy.”

“Fair enough,” Ana said graciously. “Do you know exactly how big they are?”

“About a ton each,” Jesse said. “Haven’t really had the chance for a proper weigh-in.”

Ana hummed at that, gently stirring her tea. Then she asked the killer question. “Are they safe to transport?”

Jesse tucked his chin down against his chest and took another, longer sip of tea, occupying his mouth and buying himself a moment. He had to answer eventually though. “Probably,” he allowed. “They got their people they like, and so long’s they’re around, it’ll probably be okay. But they won’t be happy about it.”

“The best we can ask for, I suppose,” Ana said. She turned to Gabe and Jack and asked, “Do you have a location in mind?”

Jack said nothing, just shrugged and leaned back in his chair. Gabe however grinned and tipped his head towards Jesse.

“Got a possibility in Nepal,” Jesse said when Ana looked back at him. “Whole temple full’a omnic monks, apparently.”

Ana regarded him, her gaze heavy for all that it was cut down by half, and Jesse realized- she’d already known all of that. Gabe had told her, and she’d played dumb to see how much Jesse actually believed they could pull this off, how confident he was in his answers.

“All right,” she said. “I can call Pharah and see if she has time off coming up. She has access to cargo transporters and a pilot who is just crazy enough to risk borrowing one without permission.”

She rose to her feet and swept out of the room and Jesse bit his tongue until he heard a door open and close somewhere in the rest of the house. Then he set his teacup down hard enough to rattle the other things on the table.

“You set that up,” he accused.

“What?” Jack asked, but Gabe grinned and spoke over him.

“I did, but for what it’s worth, you did well.”

“What all have you told her?” Jesse hissed.

Jack settled back in his seat, leaning back out of the way. “Not a good idea to sit between you two, then,” he said.

“She knows what she needs to know to make an informed decision,” Gabe said, ignoring his husband with the sort of selective deafness only learned through old marriages. “I couldn’t ask her to take these kinds of risks without giving her that much.”

“What kinda risks?” Jesse asked. “To that Pharah person? Who’s that?”

Gabe said nothing, just got up and left the kitchen for a moment. When he returned, he was holding an old-fashioned picture frame with an honest-to-god, paper-printed photograph in it instead of the normal projection screen used anymore. He held it out without comment, and Jesse took it and looked at it- it was Ana and a younger woman, arms around each other’s shoulders and warm smiles on both faces, and Jesse studied the younger woman’s face as realization dawned.

“Fareeha?” he asked. “That kid who lived with you like three summers in a row?”

They’d hit it off instantly as the truest form of siblings, Jesse and Little ReeRee, tormenting the world when they weren’t tormenting each other. She’d never asked why Jesse lived with Gabe long after most other kids would leave home, and he’d never asked where her parents were or why they dumped her on Gabe for months at a time. They lost contact when Jesse moved out, and never really reconnected after that, although Jesse had mourned the loss. He didn’t think she’d want him in her life, not when she was getting old enough to realize what a screw-up he was.

“She works for Helix Security. Pharah is her code name.” Gabe took the picture back and put it down on the counter. “If this goes wrong, she’s the one with the most to lose.”

“Right,” Jesse said, settling back in his chair, staring at the picture on the counter. “And she’s willin’ to risk it all for this?”

“She is,” Ana said from the doorway. Jesse’d had Hanzo sneak up on him too many times the past week to startle, but he flinched all the same. “Her choice,” she added.

“I meant no harm, I just,” Jesse said as she walked back over to her chair. He scrubbed his right hand across his face, pressed his thumb against the bridge of his nose for a moment to quell the tension he could feel gathering behind it. “They’re cranky lizards, but they’re _my_ cranky lizards, ya know? And this is getting kinda big.”

Ana smiled at that, forgiveness in the softening of her face. “You will have to give them up soon enough,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,” Jesse agreed, and tried not to think about what else he might have to give up on.

“So,” Jack said, sitting forward again now that the fighting was over. “We have a lot of planning to do, is it all right if we stay the night?”

“I only have one guest room, but I’m sure Jesse will be fine with sleeping on the couch,” Ana said serenely, and Jesse thought about the couch- cushiony and shorter than him by at least a foot- and forced himself not to cringe.

“Sure thing,” he said, because they were all looking at him and waiting for him to protest so they could gently remind him of the pecking order around here.

“All right, then, let’s get it going,” Gabe said, and Jesse settled himself in for a long night.

* * *

The storm darkened the sky long before sunset, a slow steady approach, thunder grumbling to itself on the horizon and wind snapping small branches and catching at clothes and hair in a warning of what was to come. Hanzo got to the ranch at eight, well after Efi had called to complain about Orisa sending her home, and then sat in his car without moving. It was ridiculous, Jesse wasn’t even _there_ , but he couldn’t bring himself to get out of the car.

He owed the man better than this. Jesse had done nothing to deserve Hanzo being- well, Hanzo. At the very least, he deserved an explanation, a chance to sit down and talk out the issues with him. He deserved to know that Hanzo was actually a total mess, and why it was a bad idea to be bringing that into his life any more than absolutely necessary. He deserved the chance to run, really, and he would take it if Hanzo managed to explain how things really were-

Something moved, and Hanzo snapped his head up from where he’d leaned it back on the headrest. There was a small beam of light cutting through the darkness, disappearing over in the trees off to the side of the property.

Hanzo waited, breath held and nerves singing, until the light had been gone for a solid thirty count. Then he opened his door and slipped out of the car, staying low behind its bulk. Into the backseat, where he retrieved Storm Bow and his quiver and then around the house. He cut through the field, moving fast and quiet as a whisper. Up the hill and almost face-first into the barrier- he’d never been here so late, never come at it from this angle. Orisa was on her patrol, a glowing beacon in the dark, and the dragons were out of sight, hidden in the stables to avoid the lashing wind and the sporadic blasts of rain.

He triggered the disruptor and slipped through the barrier, trusting the storm-darkness to hide him as he moved across the open field. He was doubting himself now, feeling a fool, wanting to hide Storm Bow behind his body as he approached Orisa. He could have imagined that light, he was tired and stressed and had not been sleeping well lately. And why would anyone be out there anyway, crawling through the trees in a storm at night.

“Orisa,” he called, and she turned sharply-

\- the air sang and Orisa staggered, and Hanzo felt something snatch at his arm and jerk him around, and the bone-snap crack rolled across the field just a second too late.

It had been years since Hanzo had been seriously injured, years since he had fought through the shocked numbness of a body that knew it was hurting long before the brain caught up. He bent down to scoop up Storm Bow, dropped from nerveless fingers, and ran towards Orisa. She was pushing herself upright, a gold glow hanging close to her skin as she shielded herself. 

Something _panged_ off her head, rippling the shield, and the crack came again. A noise answered from behind, almost lost in the wind but echoing in Hanzo’s bones, a deep growling. A sleeping dragon disturbed.

“All right?” Hanzo yelled. He slapped a hand to Orisa’s shoulder and left a bloody handprint behind.

“I am well,” she said, then planted her feet and raised her main shield.

The next bullet was intended for Hanzo, hitting the shield on level with his head. He ducked back behind Orisa’s bulk instinctively. His hand was slick with blood but was moving properly again, if weaker than normal, so he switched Storm Bow over and settled it properly in his grip. He stepped back out, staying behind the shield. The shots were coming from the tree line in the distance. He measured the distance, judged the angles, set an arrow to the string.

Another sharp crack, another ripple in the shield- and a roar from behind. Hanzo twisted back to look and a dragon was exploding out of the stables, all flashing teeth and furious eyes. Scenting blood on the air, knowing it was a companion who was hurt- no glimmer of gold, only blue on blue, and it was like that day with McCree all over again.

“Bunny, no!” Hanzo yelled, couldn’t stop himself. He lunged away from Orisa’s shield, turned and lifted the bow, drawing, desperate to take the shot first-

The barrier flexed under his arrow but held fast, and there was another crack. Bunny shrieked but kept coming, clipping Hanzo and knocking him off his feet, aiming for the tree line. He would hit the barrier hard enough to rip right through it if the shooter didn’t get a kill shot off first.

“Drop the barrier!” Hanzo yelled, pushing himself back upright and running. Ahead and to the left, aiming around the rushing hypertrain that was Bunny. The barrier rippled and disappeared, and Hanzo shot once, twice, three arrows winging into the trees. There was silence for a single blissful moment, no return bullet coming to splash Hanzo’s brains across the grass. A breath of calm.

And then Bunny hit the tree line.

They were strong old trees, tall and narrow and flexible, and they took it well. One cracked and collapsed backwards immediately but the others merely bowed outward, branches snapping but trunks standing firm. Bunny thrashed and roared and twisted around, weaving his neck between the trees, slender enough that he could almost fit his entire body through the gaps.

Hanzo ran towards him, ducking under the slashing arch of dragontail and aiming his bow in the direction he had seen the light come from. The shooter had had enough time to make it clear before Bunny hit the trees, if they were smart enough to retreat when Hanzo started shooting back. He left Bunny to untangle himself from the trees and ran to cut them off.

There was a car in the yard beside the main house, and a figure darting towards it. Hanzo stopped, took aim, fired, and the figure staggered but kept running. He watched it go, studying the car for marks to distinguish it, watched as the person got in and peeled away and disappeared.

The pain was starting to leak though the adrenalin now, a dull distant throbbing that splintered into white-hot lightning along his nerves when he moved his arm too much or too fast. It was starting to rain properly now, the storm only just beginning, and Hanzo was already shivering. He would have to soothe Bunny, hurt and angry and scared, have to lure him back inside the diameter of the barrier before Frog figured it out and slipped away. And then he would have to call Efi, and Reinhardt, and J- McCree.

He switched Storm Bow to his good hand and turned away, back towards the dragon still screeching with impotent fury, and resigned himself to a long, painful night.


	11. Chapter 11

The storm raged for hours, but the following day dawned bright and clear, the sky crystal blue and the grass glittering with moisture. It seemed wrong, after the night before.

“How is she?” Hanzo asked as Efi delicately tied down the trailing end of the bandage wrapped around his bicep. The bullet had merely clipped him, the wound deep enough to be irritating but not enough to justify seeking medical attention. Orisa, on the other hand, had yet to move her right arm at all, and Efi had only left her examination for a moment to help Hanzo apply proper bandages instead of the field dressing he had put on earlier.

“I can fix it,” Efi said bravely, but she was blinking back tears and her chin kept trembling. She had not been prepared for this, for all that she had built Orisa with such conflict in mind.

A rattling hiss interrupted them and they both looked over to see how the standoff was progressing. Frog was coiled protectively around his sullen brother, his normally bright manner gone sharp and fierce. Reinhardt was speaking to them, soothing and calm, but every move he made towards them was greeted with hostility. Hanzo needed to go over and help, see if Frog trusted him enough to let him close. If not- dragons were hardy creatures, and if the wound was going to kill Bunny, it would have done so before now.

Efi finished the last of the bandages, wiping her fingers off on her shirt out of apparent habit. “Are you going to call Mister McCree?” she asked.

Hanzo nodded and she left to go back over to Orisa. He had retrieved a shirt from the house, a sedate blue and grey flannel that was too long in the sleeves and almost not broad enough in the shoulders. It was better than his bloodied shirt, though, so he pulled it back up over his shoulder. Then he retrieved his phone from the pocket and opened the contacts lists. It was still hideously early, but he had already put it off for hours.

The phone rang long enough that Hanzo was about to hang up and try again later. Then the call connected, and McCree said, “Mmyeah, wut.”

Hanzo hesitated, not sure where to begin, and apparently kept quiet long enough for McCree to worry. There was a shuffling, a pause, then, “Hanzo? Somethin’ wrong?”

“Yes,” Hanzo said, using the prompting as a launching point. “There was an intruder at the ranch last night. They were here to kill the dragons.”

There was noise on the phone, shuffling and a thud and a grunt of surprised pain. “You all right?” McCree asked after a few more moments of shuffling, sounding more awake now.

“Yes,” Hanzo said. “However, Bunny and Orisa were shot.”

More silence and scuffling. Then the gentle ding in his ear that signaled the call switching over to video. Hanzo sighed, held the phone out and checked to make sure the angle did not show too much of the shirt he was wearing, and activated the camera. McCree’s face appeared on screen, his hair wild and his untrimmed beard even shaggier than normal, dark circles smudged like bruises under his eyes. He was not wearing a shirt, and early morning sunlight slanted through a nearby window and shone on him, highlighting body hairs and imperfections in the skin in unforgiving detail. It also made his eyes shine like gold, and Hanzo had a brief moment where McCree’s voice was nothing but white noise in his ears as he stared, mesmerized. 

He had missed this, missed McCree. It was a surprise to realize it, but- he missed the man, and felt better now for seeing him, talking to him. There was a tight little knot under his heart that unraveled at the sight of him, and Hanzo suddenly decided he did not want it to come back.

Then McCree said his name, sharp and concerned, and Hanzo shook himself out of it.

“I apologize,” he said, and McCree’s face softened.

“I got it, been a long night,” he said gently. “Can I see?”

Hanzo flipped the phone around, first panning over Orisa and Efi, then landing on Frog and Bunny, still bundled up together and resisting all attempts at medical attention. When he turned it back, McCree’s face was grim.

“What happened?” he asked. There was someone moving behind him, a question asked in a quiet voice, and McCree waved it off and gestured for Hanzo to continue. He gave a recounting of the night’s events, starting with the light in the trees and ending with the unmarked car speeding off, trying to be as straightforward and unemotional as possible while McCree grew visibly upset.

“Everyone all right?” he asked once Hanzo was done.

“Efi says she can fix Orisa. And if the injury was any real threat to Bunny, he would already have succumbed to it.” It wasn’t a _yes_ , but it was the closest Hanzo could give.

Efi had looked up at her name and was watching Hanzo with a frown. As Hanzo watched, she pulled out her own phone and began tapping at it. She put it away again after a few moments and turned back to Orisa. McCree was talking to someone behind him, a distracted conversation about security measures and acreage and sightlines, but he paused when his phone gave a soft ding that transmitted down the line. He looked at it, frowned, and reached for it, his hand momentarily blocking the camera. A beat, then another, then, “Wait, you got shot too?”

“No,” Hanzo said reflexively, and turned to glare at Efi, who stuck her tongue out at him in reply. “I was not shot. It was a graze, nothing more.”

“Right.” McCree grunted, and the camera jerked and swung around wildly as he picked the phone up and started moving. “I’m headed home, you guys got this covered?”

A woman answered him, soft and smooth, talking about hypertrain schedules. Hanzo wanted to protest, to explain that the injury was not serious and there was nothing McCree could do here, but he stayed silent. He would feel better for the man’s return.

“I’ll be there in a couple hours,” McCree said to Hanzo after a discussion with the woman and Morrison. He turned the phone so he was back in frame and not showing random shots of the ceiling of whatever building he was in. He had put on a shirt somewhere in all of that, and Hanzo absolutely did not mourn that loss. “You’ll be good ‘til then?”

“Of course,” Hanzo said, although he had made a similar promise when McCree had told him he was leaving in the first place, and that had not worked out too well. 

Then Frog issued a particularly shrill noise, like a teakettle left on the stove too long, and Hanzo looked over to them, and McCree swore at the noise. “See you then,” he said, and hung up, and Hanzo tucked his phone into his pocket and headed across the field.

It had taken over two hours for Hanzo to lure an agitated Bunny back into the range of the barrier, his arm throbbing and bleeding through the field dressing he had applied and the pouring rain steadily soaking him through. He was in no mood for any more antics from these two. Frog, probably sensing this, swiveled his head to watch Hanzo’s approach and made no attempt to stop him, even when he breached the invisible line into the space Frog had been protecting so zealously. He put a hand to the dragon’s neck and patted it.

“Come here,” he said, gentling his voice, and Frog whuffed and lowered his head. He nosed at Hanzo’s shoulder, hard enough to make him sway on his feet and gasp a little with the pain, and made a mournful noise. Another sound, a growl, and Bunny suddenly appeared, snaking his head around his brother’s neck and bodily pushing Frog away. There was a brief spat, snarling and snapping at the air, and then Frog turned away and Bunny lowered his chin to rest on the ground, eyes flicking from Hanzo to Reinhardt and back again.

“Did you see where he was shot?” Reinhardt asked. He had followed Hanzo in, daring to approach when Frog had been chastised.

Hanzo dared to reach out and put a hand on Bunny’s nose, expecting to get shaken off and pushed away and pleasantly surprised when his trespass was tolerated. “Left side,” he said, calculating the angles in his head. “Just behind his front leg.” It was not a sharp enough angle to hit his heart, and if it had punctured a lung he would have been displaying symptoms hours ago. It was most likely caught on a rib or lodged in his pectoral muscles, and there would be nothing they could do about it. Attempting to remove it would hurt him far more than leaving it in ever could.

There was some growling and glaring as Reinhardt circled around to Bunny’s bad side and began searching for the wound, tracing his hand down the dragon’s neck so he could track his progress, but they were behaving themselves now. Hanzo crouched down and put his own hand on Bunny’s cheek, petting the tiny scales there. He watched the way the sunlight shone off them, the way his shadow cut across them and darkened them from summer sky to ocean water. Bunny watched him in turn, but he was silent and still, having decided to trust them.

A few minutes, and then beeping from Bunny’s side, and Reinhardt came back over with his scanner in hand. Bunny pulled his head away from Hanzo at that, but gently, not shoving or rejecting, and Hanzo straightened up.

“And?” he asked. Reinhardt had the holoprojection pulled up again, but it still made no sense to him.

“It did no serious damage,” Reinhardt said. “The injury will heal well on its own. If it troubles him too much, I will bring painkillers.”

“He will not appreciate that,” Hanzo said. His head was starting to throb in beat with the faint pulsing pain in his arm. He should take some painkillers of his own and go lie down, get some sleep before McCree got there.

“And I believe I have a way of removing the implants,” Reinhardt added, and Hanzo forgot all about sleeping, suddenly focused entirely on the man. “It might not work, and they will not like it either way-”

“Will it hurt them to try?” Hanzo asked, and Reinhardt shrugged.

“Yes,” he said. “I would prefer to talk to Miss Efi about it first.”

The sea of scales began to stir before them, Frog peeling himself away now that he was no longer protecting his brother. He looked over towards Efi and Orisa and pushed off from Bunny, heading over to investigate. Bunny uncoiled, relaxing as much as Hanzo had ever seen him, watching Reinhardt and Hanzo with a steady gaze that for once didn’t hint at barely restrained violence. All it took to earn his trust was get shot, apparently.

“McCree is on his way back,” Hanzo said. “I am going to get some rest before he arrives.”

“You have certainly earned it,” Reinhardt said. “Sleep well, my friend.”

It threw him for a moment- friend?- but Hanzo just nodded and turned away. McCree hopefully would not mind him napping for a few hours on a couch, at least not more than he would Hanzo’s going through his laundry and stealing his clothes.

He had thought sleep would not come easily, but as soon as his head hit the cushion, he was drifting off into confusing dreams of storms and rifle cracks and warm gold eyes.

* * *

Jesse came home to a world gone sideways.

Frog greeted him with a growl instead of his normal cheerfulness, and Bunny- mobile but slow, careful of his injury- was reserved but friendly. Efi and Reinhardt and Orisa were clustered around a medscanner and talking to each other and all three broke off to stare in silence when Jesse dared to approach until he got creeped out by it and went away again, only a perfunctory polite greeting exchanged between them. And Hanzo was wearing Jesse’s shirt and sleeping on his couch, like any of it was even close to normal. Even asleep he looked exhausted, so Jesse draped a blanket over him and left him to sleep, heading back outside to see if he could get Frog to get over his snit.

He’d just bribed Frog into friendliness again with one of the chocolate bars he kept on his person at all times anymore when something moved behind him, so quiet he almost missed it. Frog chirped a greeting and looked otherwise unconcerned, so Jesse relaxed again.

“Bunny’s gonna be okay, I take it,” he said, tossing another chocolate chunk high into the air, where Frog snatched it up with perfect aim.

“Yes,” Hanzo agreed, coming to stand beside Jesse, eyes on the dragon before them.

“You doin’ all right?” Jesse asked, daring a look over. He was still pale, dark eyes dull with not enough sleep, right hand cradling his left elbow. Jesse ached just looking at him.

“We need to talk,” Hanzo said instead of answering, and Jesse tossed the last bit of chocolate into the air and folded the empty wrapper down, holding onto it to give nervous hands something to fidget with.

“Probably should, yeah,” he agreed. He didn’t want to say anything, didn’t want to risk reading the situation wrong, but Hanzo stayed silent as well, and really, there was only one thing they needed to talk about. “Y’know I didn’t mean anythin’ by it, no pressure or anythin’-”

“I did not date,” Hanzo interrupted, and Jesse turned to face him properly. “When I was in Japan I had- a partner, chosen by the elders for their trustworthiness. But it was not a real relationship, and I had never had any interest in pursuing one with anyone else.”

“Oh,” Jesse said stupidly, although he managed to bite his tongue before anything else slipped out. Hanzo was gorgeous and anyone would be lucky to have him- but that meant nothing if Hanzo simply wasn’t interested in any of it. 

“I apologize,” Hanzo said quietly. “I know it is not what you wanted.”

“It’s fine,” Jesse said. “Don’t gotta apologize, it’s not your fault.”

“I know,” Hanzo agreed, and then hesitated for a moment, tense as if preparing to run, and then- “but I think I might be now.”

Jesse didn’t move, hardly dared breathe. He watched Frog nose around the grass around them, hoping for a stray chocolate piece, rather than risk looking at Hanzo.

“I do not- I don’t know what I want,” Hanzo said with an impatient tutting noise, scraping one hand through his hair, still loose around his shoulders instead of tied back. “I do not want to keep feeling as I have, these last few days.”

“We can still be friends,” Jesse offered, hoping it wouldn’t be that simple, praying it wouldn’t be more complicated than that.

“I do not want that, either,” Hanzo said irritably, like Jesse was the one being contrary here. “I want- I liked that night we went downtown. I want that again.”

“Darlin’, that was a date,” Jesse said slowly.

“I know.” Hanzo folded his arms again, frowned down at his feet. “I am just trying to tell you I am not very good at this.”

“All right,” Jesse said, trying not to grin, to cheer and punch the air and maybe sweep Hanzo up into a rib-crushing hug that he would no doubt hate. “We’ll go slow, then. But you’re- you want that, right? Us, dating?”

“Yes,” Hanzo decided after a heart-stopping seventeen seconds- Jesse counted each and every one. “After this is over.”

“Right,” Jesse agreed, remembering the shooter all at once. They would need to be extra careful until the dragons were gone.

Until the dragons were gone. Jesse looked at Frog, who had abandoned his search for chocolate and was painstakingly licking his whiskers clean instead, and felt a strange sort of melancholy settle over him. He had not fully realized that they would be leaving until just that moment. Giant pains in the ass that they were, he was going to miss them.

“Jack said to tell you you’re off today and tomorrow,” Jesse said. “Got a guest room upstairs you’re welcome to crash in.”

“I need to go to Hamilton’s house,” Hanzo said. “He should have had information on where the dragons came from.”

“Sure thing,” Jesse agreed easily. “Let me know when you’re ready and we’ll hit the road.”

“I do not-” Hanzo began, bristling, but Jesse cut him off.

“Two pairs of eyes cuts the lookin’ time in half. I ain’t treatin’ ya like you’re fragile, Hanzo, but I’m also not lettin’ you drive ‘til you’ve had at least six more hours of sleep.”

Hanzo looked like he dearly wanted to argue, but he just nodded stiffly, unable to argue with that. “We will also need to stop by my house. My clothing from last night is ruined.”

Jesse looked him over, studying the pale blue plaid and sweatpants with the bottoms rolled up, and decided that as charming as it was to see the man running around in Jesse’s own clothes, it’d probably be best to stop there first.

“I’m gonna go see what the others are up to,” he said. “Meet at the car in twenty minutes?”

Hanzo nodded and turned away to head back towards the house. Jesse watched him go for a minute before turning back to Frog, who was watching him in turn. The dragon looked like nothing more than a very large, long-necked cat, blinking at him with lazy curiosity. Hard to imagine him gone, for all that he had only been there for a week.

“I am gonna miss you scaly bastards,” Jesse told him fondly. “You more’n your brother, if I’m bein’ honest.”

Frog tilted his head at his words and chirped, his good mood apparently restored. Jesse dared a few steps closer and patted a hand against the dragon’s neck, lingering on the feeling of smooth warm scales against his skin before he headed over towards the conference at the other end of the field, leaving the dragon behind.

* * *

She had nightmares that night, safe in a hotel room a hundred miles away, her first nightmares since Gerard-

She dreamed of thunder and flashing teeth and singing arrows, and it woke her up with a gasp and kept her awake when she should have been able to simply lie down and go back to sleep. But she had a hole punched through her shoulder and the painkillers were wearing off, and she had had a dragon come less than five meters away from killing her, so she poured herself a glass of centuries-old burgundy and sat on the bed and did research on her phone instead.

Shimada Hanzo, one-time heir to a former crime empire in Japan now gone legit. There was precious little information on him, absolutely no indication that he had moved to America to work at a dragon sanctuary, but it was definitely Shimada staring sternly at her from her phone screen, give or take a decade.

She poured herself another glass, her arm shaking under the weight of the bottle. The arrow had hit high up on her back and come out in the hollow just above her collarbone, a fatal blow save for the grace of an intervening breeze. The injury was surprisingly debilitating, the weakness in her arm a great inconvenience. She could not put a rifle to her bad shoulder, nor support its weight with her weakened hand. She had been effectively crippled with one blow from an antiquated weapon in the hands of a disgraced yakuza.

She felt- anger, perhaps. It had been a long time since anything had stirred any level of emotion in her, so she wasn’t completely sure.

Her phone started chirping in her hand, her employer calling again to remind her that her three days were up. She pressed Ignore and turned to throw her phone aside so it would not bother her again. But she stopped instead, turning it over in her hand as she thought. She could not challenge Shimada alone, not as she was, and she had no allies to call for help. But there were people she could call, people Shimada and his friends could not fight against.

It might move the dragons beyond her reach permanently, but it was better than letting him win. She had failed to complete contracts before, but she had never let someone else hurt her worse than she hurt them.

She set her wine glass aside and unlocked her phone, ignoring the icon that informed her she had missed seven calls. One brief search later, and she was dialing the number and listening to the ringing. A click, the call connecting, a recording stating the office hours and if she’d like to leave a message an animal control officer and-or associate get back to her as soon as possible.

“Yes, hi, sorry,” she said when it prompted her to leave her message, applying a thick American accent. “I just- I think someone in my area has illegal animals on his property. I keep hearing them at night, it sounds like roaring. It’s Jesse McCree.” And she listed the address and hung up immediately afterward, then turned the phone off. She would be destroying this one and replacing it as soon as she left her hotel.

She picked her glass back up and took a sip, and smiled.


	12. Chapter 12

In retrospect, Hanzo realized he had never gone inside Hamilton’s house. It had always been Efi. So he could be forgiven for not knowing what a task he had set for himself.

“Didn’t mention he was a crazy hoarder who didn’t trust computers,” Jesse said, picking up a spiral-bound notebook and skimming through it before slapping it down onto to Not Useful pile.

“I was not aware,” Hanzo replied, trying very hard not to snap at him. They were hours into a task he had thought would take only a short while. He had envisioned a brief search through a database, not slogging through mountains of papers, and he was ready to call it for the lost cause it so clearly was. But Jesse had suggested that since it was the last thing he had done before he died, anything of relevance would be at the top of one of the piles. And so here they were, three hours later and barely halfway done.

“Gonna say we just burn the whole thing down when we’re done,” Jesse muttered, but he was not complaining, so Hanzo ignored him.

He headed into the kitchen and stopped there, looking around in defeat. The kitchen table and half the available counter space had been converted to filing cabinets, and they had not even made it into the dining room yet.

There was a red light blinking steadily from beside the door leading to the back yard. Hanzo stared at it, thinking- the house had a monitoring system, Efi had told him about it-

“Jesse,” he said, and Jesse came up behind him a moment later, following his gaze to the warning light.

“Where’s the master controls?” he asked, and Hanzo shook his head and moved away to start looking.

Twenty minutes later, the door to the basement had been uncovered from behind a bookshelf and they were sitting at the control panel for the house’s monitoring system, playing back the security footage of the woman who had broken into the house.

“Think that’s our shooter?” Jesse asked. He had already pulled his phone out, the ringing echoing tinnily in Hanzo’s ears.

“She was at the sanctuary a few days ago,” Hanzo said, staring at the woman. High ponytail, tattooed forearm. “She said she had an appointment with Morrison, but she was looking at the dragons.”

Jesse’s call connected and he lifted the phone up long enough to say, “Hang on, Gabe,” before lowering it again, hitting the button to switch it to speaker. “Got some way to send him this?”

Hanzo accessed the controls and sent a few screenshots that showed her face to Jesse's phone. He looked them over for a moment before sending them off to Gabe. “Just sent you some shots of a woman we think might be our shooter.”

Reyes said nothing for a few moments, presumably looking over the images. “Can’t say she looks familiar,” he said finally. “But it’s been a while since I knew people who did that work. Give me a few minutes.”

“Give the phone to Jack,” Jesse ordered. “Hanzo said she was at the sanctuary, came in to talk to him.”

There was shuffling noises, voices in the background. Then Morrison was there, and he said, “Only visitor I’ve had at the sanctuary in the last couple weeks was a couple of potential donors coming by for tours.”

“We don’t do those,” Hanzo said.

“Exactly,” Morrison agreed. “No one should’ve been back with the dragons at all. What day was it?”

It took a moment to remember, but eventually Hanzo was able to give the date. Morrison grunted, but whatever he had to say was lost in a sudden commotion behind him, voices raised in the background. A brief conversation, and then a woman was speaking.

“Her name is Amelie Lacroix,” she said.

“Lacroix,” Reyes echoed. “The ballerina?”

“Yes,” the woman said, sounding unamused at the interruption. “She was married to Gerard Lacroix, a close friend of mine. He was killed in what the authorities called a home invasion gone wrong. Amelie disappeared not long after, and reappeared as a mercenary called Widowmaker.”

“She killed her husband?” Jesse asked, and the woman sighed, sounding old and worn.

“I would like to say no, and that this… new life of hers is a response to the trauma of witnessing her husband’s murder. But I can’t be sure.”

“She is injured,” Hanzo said, because he was confident of that much, at least. “The arrow hit her, I am sure of it. And now the dragons know to keep watch for her, and any other people trying to sneak around.” He had seen it already, Frog and Bunny both periodically stopping whatever they were doing to sweep a watchful gaze across the fields and trees beyond the barrier.

“So we’ve got some breathin’ room, at least,” Jesse said. “Better to get it movin’, though. Has Pharah contacted you yet?”

“You give me an hour’s notice and she’ll be ready to go when we need her,” the woman said.

Jesse hesitated, then hit a button on his phone and turned to look at Hanzo, his expression serious. “Should we tell her to make the call?”

“No,” Hanzo said after a moment’s deliberation. “Bunny needs more time to heal. The sooner we try to move them, the more defensive they will be. And Reinhardt believes he can cancel out the implants.”

“How long?” Jesse asked.

“Two days,” Hanzo said. It would be enough time for the wound to start healing and the pain to dissipate, and take the edge off of the memories of the attack and allow the dragons to start trusting people a little more again.

Jesse nodded and stepped away, taking the phone off speaker and talking quietly into it. Hanzo looked back at the monitor, staring at the woman frozen on the screen, until Jesse had hung up and come back over.

“Gabe’s lookin’ for her, but she’s good at her job, he don’t think he’ll find her,” he said. Hanzo nodded once and reached over and hit the power button, erasing her image from the screen and plunging the basement into near-total darkness, the only light spilling in through the door left ajar.

“We should go,” he said. He wanted to go home, get some sleep. He would need to call Genji again and he had to be prepared for that. They had gotten what they came for, in a manner of speaking.

“Yeah,” Jesse agreed, and followed him out.

* * *

The sore arm made it difficult to sleep, Hanzo found. So did the silence, if he were being honest- he kept hearing echoes of the rifle cracking, the whistling as a bullet blew past. He was up at three in the morning, sitting at his kitchen table in his empty quiet house, when he decided he could tolerate the silence no longer.

The phone rang on the table while he stirred sugar into his tea, a small indulgence. He had only managed one sip before the call connected.

“Hello, brother,” Genji said, and it would be a lifetime before Hanzo stopped flinching every time he heard that voice, those words.

“Have the elders reached a decision?” Hanzo asked.

“Before I answer that, tell me about Jesse.”

Hanzo set his teacup down and stared at the phone, as if Genji would somehow be able to sense his annoyed disapproval through the line. “This is not the time for games, Genji.”

“So tell me one thing, real quick,” Genji said, his tone dipping dangerously close to wheedling. “You know I won’t stop until you do, so if this takes too long, it’s really all your fault.”

“That is not,” Hanzo began, then cut himself off. How easy it was, only a matter of seconds, for Genji to rile him up and send him right back to their teenage years in Hanamura. He meant well by it, these days- in their youth Genji’s words were weapons, carefully barbed to tear at his brother while sounding light as a joke to everyone around them. Hanzo would have to rein in his automatic responses until he could teach himself to react appropriately.

“He wears a cowboy hat,” he said. “Now, if that is settled-”

But clearly it wasn’t, because Genji made a rude noise. “Something better than that, Hanzo,” he ordered. “Something _real_.”

Hanzo did not know what to say to that. What was there to say- that he had decided to come rushing home only after he’d heard Hanzo had been shot? That Hanzo had not spoken to him for two days and pined ridiculously? That he was nearly eaten by a dragon and came back not twenty-four hours later to offer his help? That it had taken Hanzo a matter of minutes to come to rely on his steady dependability?

If it was anyone else, he would have simply hung up and called back later, when his point had been made. But this was Genji. He deserved something _real_.

“I like him,” he said finally, and it sounded like nothing, it _was_ nothing.

But Genji said, soft and fond, “That’s good, Hanzo.”

His throat was raw, like he had been screaming. He took a long sip of tea to soothe it. “Will you tell me what the elders said now?” he asked, when he could trust his voice.

“Oh, they said yes,” Genji said. “Almost immediately, actually. When are you bringing them over?”

It took Hanzo a few moments to answer that, busy wrestling down his urge to smack his brother despite the thousands of miles between them. “A couple of days,” he said. “The plan currently seems to be using a cargo transporter.”

“I’ll have to call you back to give you coordinates and clearance codes,” Genji said cheerfully. “I am truly happy for you, brother.”

“Thank you,” Hanzo said awkwardly, startled by how much those simple words touched him. But then Genji, being Genji, kept talking.

“So tell me something else: is he hot?”

The only appropriate response to that was to hang up on him, although Hanzo was smiling as he did so, and even in the silence that came afterwards he felt a lot less lonely.

* * *

It happened thirty-seven hours after the shooting, just long enough for him to relax, to think there was going to be no immediate backlash from Widowmaker. It didn’t come in the way he was expecting either, which was another hail of bullets, but instead in a polite knock at the front door.

Jesse was working with the cows when the knock came, checking on an injury on a calf whose mother had panicked during the shooting. He only noticed the visitor when he came out of the barn and spotted the strange vehicle in the driveway.

“Gotta get me a dog,” he muttered to himself. He liked dogs. It was only a matter of finding one who could handle the responsibilities and independence that came with being a ranch dog, and he’d just never put the effort into a proper search.

He came around the side of the house, rather than go through it, and caught the stranger coming down off the porch and heading towards the corner of the house. The man startled back but recovered smoothly, smiling a fake customer service smile.

“Good morning. Are you Jesse McCree, the landowner?”

“I am,” Jesse said, polite but cool. “And you are?”

“Allen Draper, with Animal Control,” the man replied, and Jesse’s heart stopped.

So this was her play. It made sense- the only real defense they’d had was ignorance. The dragons weren’t hidden, they were just up the hill and only barely out of sight from the house, and all that had protected them from discovery was the lack of people looking for them.

Jesse slipped his hands into his pockets, touching the fingers of his right hand to his phone. He could easily send Hanzo a message, warn him that Animal Control was here, that the worst-case scenario was happening. But he’d have to find a way to do it subtly, or the officer would know something was up. So far it was just one man with a tablet and the air of an overworked public servant, but that could change at any second. 

Efi was on the ranch, still working on Orisa. The dragons had probably already noticed the intruder and hopefully Efi would have picked up on their strange behavior.

“You need somethin’, Mister Draper?” he asked. Casual and cool, he could play it easy. Just another busy rancher who didn’t really have the time to be messing around with animal control, but had to play nice ‘cause he couldn’t afford to piss them off either.

“We’ve been getting some reports from your neighbors,” Draper said. “May I take a look around?”

“I’d really rather you not,” Jesse said, still polite but getting cooler. “And unless you got a warrant…”

“Well, thing is,” and Draper unfolded the tablet cover and produced a piece of paper, cream-colored and heavy stock, all official-looking. “I do have a warrant.”

Jesse took the paper, unfolded it and looked at it, for all the good it did him. Of course it was legit. It was a small town with small-minded officials, and Widowmaker had probably dropped just enough hints to lead them to think dragon without actually coming out and saying the word herself, and the thought of it would be scary enough for them to be willing to step on the toes of personal liberties.

“If I need to bring in the police, I will,” Draper warned. “It will go much better for you if you just let me look around a little.”

He could just as easily send him away- he had his old gun on his hip, a new note of paranoia in his life thanks to random sniper attacks- but the man would probably come back with a small army. It’d buy them some time, but probably not enough, and they’d be screwed after that window was closed. This way, it was only one man. Jesse wasn’t above knocking him out and claiming he’d slipped in some cow shit and caught his head on a fence post.

“Barn’s over there,” he said, waving his hand in the appropriate direction and taking petty satisfaction from the man’s double-take at his prosthetic arm.

“Right,” he said, still distracted, probably imagining all the ways Jesse could’ve lost it. “I won’t be too long.”

Jesse nodded and ambled along after him, keeping an eye out to make sure he was headed towards the barn but going slow enough to put some distance between them. When he felt he had enough distance, he pulled out his phone. Despite Jack’s orders, Hanzo had gone into work that day, probably to stave off the anxiety and boredom. It was a blessing in disguise, really. Jesse went to texts instead of risking a call and sent a fast message to Hanzo, typos and all, before pocketing his phone again and picking up his pace.

Now he just had to buy time, and hope.

* * *

Hanzo was with the dragons when his phone chimed, fixing a distressed newcomer’s shed, which had suffered damage in the storm. The fences were designed to flex but the sheds were rigid and broke easily under the force of rambunctious dragons or strong winds. He ignored the chirping phone at first, reluctant to take his eyes off the unfamiliar dragon, but he checked it as soon as he had left the enclosure, and seconds later he was running for the main gate.

_Animal cl here w warrant, tryng distract, grab rein and get hear now_

Reinhardt was busy with a pair of vet students but he broke away as soon as he saw Hanzo hovering anxiously in the doorway. He came over and took one look at the message Hanzo showed him, and his face settled into a stony mask.

“Can you remove the implants without damaging them?” Hanzo asked.

“Yes,” Reinhardt said- it was do or die now, no time for equivocating. “I will meet you at the ranch with my equipment.”

Hanzo nodded and ducked away, leaving Reinhardt to dole out chores to his students. He walked politely to the main door and exited the building before he ran again, racing to his car, trying to figure out where he was going to park, how he was going to get the dragons to cooperate with him, what he was even expected to do about this.

At least Morrison would not give him grief for leaving like this he thought, which jarred another thought free. He juggled car keys and phone between his hands, having to actually slow down long enough to sort himself out, and scrolled through his contact list until he found the proper number and pressed Call.

“What’s wrong?” Morrison greeted after one-and-a-half rings. Apparently Hanzo calling him was indicative of a crisis, which. He wasn’t _wrong_.

“Animal Control is at the ranch,” Hanzo said. “Whatever the plan is, it needs to happen now.”

“Shit,” Morrison said, and hung up on him.

Hanzo got himself together long enough to unlock his car and get in and start the engine, but then he had to stop and take a deep breath. His hands were shaking, which surprised him. He had known something like this would happen, had been waiting for it from the start- and yet, now that it was here, it punched the breath from his lungs. They could still save this, if they were lucky. They most likely would not be.

He looked up at the sanctuary one last time, then got moving.

* * *

They were at the shed beside the house, formerly for tools and a workshop but now just a dusty shrine to the ranch’s previous owner, when Jesse heard a rustle of grass, felt a feather-light touch of fingers against his hand. He’d been dragging his feet as much as possible, showing Draper every inch of the barn, lingering on the bull who might’ve been the source of some real suspicious noises, lotsa city folk moving out here and none of them know what a cow really sounds like, y’know? And it had paid off- Draper hadn’t even glanced up the hill yet, let alone started heading that direction.

Jesse excused himself and ducked around the corner, and there was Hanzo, looking as cool and unaffected as always, and Jesse wanted to kiss him.

“I called Morrison,” Hanzo said quietly, and that was why Jesse had texted him instead of someone else- Hanzo would think of things like that. “Reinhardt is on his way. How long do we have?”

“Runnin’ outta things to distract him with,” Jesse said. “Won’t be too much longer.”

Hanzo looked away and nodded and started to move, but hesitated. “There was a car parked on the side of the road close to here.”

“Widowmaker?” Jesse asked, but before Hanzo could answer, Draper stepped out of the shed and shut the door with a creaky slam behind him. In the time it took him to come around the corner, Hanzo vanished, quiet and quick as smoke on the breeze.

“All right, Mister McCree,” Draper said, brushing dust and cobwebs off his hands. “According to city records, there’s another building towards the back of the property. I’d like to take a look there.”

“Sure thing,” Jesse agreed, hoping Hanzo was still close enough to hear that, hoping he’d come up with a plan in the last five seconds.

He had, evidently. They were barely twenty steps away from the shed when a familiar voice chirped, “Hello!”

Draper wheeled around and, coming from around the other side of the shed, shining in the light like a literal angel, was Orisa. She looked at them and smiled and waved her working hand- Efi was still working on repairs, last Jesse had checked. “I am Orisa,” she said.

“What the hell,” Draper muttered, inching closer to Jesse.

“Oh, right, forgot ‘bout that,” Jesse said, taking his cue and running with it. “Got a friend uses that old stables as a workshop. She built Orisa.”

“You didn’t think to mention it?” Draper demanded, his voice screechy, and Jesse frowned at him.

“Orisa ain’t an _it_ , she’s a she,” he said. “Got a problem with omnics, Draper?”

There was no safe answer to that question, not with Orisa standing right there, looking like a puppy watching the boot approaching her face and trusting she wasn’t actually about to be kicked. “Is that legal?” he asked instead. “Someone just building an omnic like that?”

“Good question,” Jesse said. “Orisa?”

“Building omnics qualifies as creating new life by the laws of this country, and therefore is not regulated,” Orisa reported. “New AIs must be reported and will be monitored for an undisclosed period of time.”

“There you go,” Jesse said. “Lotsa folk ‘round here don’t care much for omnics. Probably you got called in ‘cause of her.”

Draper looked back and forth between them, his face gone pale and his eyes still wide. Orisa, it seemed, had scared the crap out of him. In fairness, she used to scare Jesse a little too before he learned better. “Excuse me, I have to make a call,” he said, and stumbled away, doing a strange sideways crab-like walk in order to not take his eyes off Orisa without making it too obvious that he was staring at her.

Jesse waited until the man was out of hearing range before he drifted over to Orisa. “You’re a godsend,” he said.

“Yes, I am good,” Orisa agreed, sounding pleased. Then she held out her working arm, hand curled into a fist. “Fist bump,” she requested politely.

Jesse curled his left hand into a fist in answer and tapped it to hers, metal to metal. “We ain’t done yet,” he warned. “Gotta keep him away from the dragons long enough for Hanzo to figure somethin’ out.”

“Okay,” Orisa said, settling into place like a goalie taking up position, and Jesse dipped his head to hide his smile.

The man wasn’t gonna know what hit him.

* * *

The dragons were at the nearest edge of the barrier when Hanzo approached, clustered together and staring down the hill, laser-focused on the intruder. They were not acting overly aggressive, at least, although that wasn’t much.

“I sent Orisa down,” Efi said as he walked up to her. She jerked her chin to indicate the dragons, looking frazzled. “But they won’t move.”

“It is all right,” Hanzo said. He sidestepped to stand in Bunny’s line of vision, but Bunny just lifted his head and stared over him, about what Hanzo had expected.

“Reinhardt isn’t here either,” Efi continued. “And how’s Mister McCree’s friend supposed to fly a transporter in here without that man noticing?”

Hanzo acted without thinking, without giving himself time to talk himself out of it. He stepped back over to Efi and placed a hand on her shoulder, pulling her in for a rough half-hug. “It will be fine,” he said. “ _They_ will be fine. I promise.”

She leaned into him, her bony shoulder sharp against his ribs, her face turned against his arm. He let her have her moment, then carefully pulled away from her. She sniffed and shook her head, shaking off her panic. “So when’s Reinhardt get here?”

“Now,” Reinhardt said, startling Efi as he came around the outer curve of the barrier to them. He had approached from the direction opposite the house, so he had probably parked in the field beyond the edge of Jesse’s property. 

The equipment he had promised to bring turned out to be something like a fat ballpoint pen, which he held out to Efi. Her hands were still shaking as she accepted it, but her expression was all business, and she got to work on it immediately, sitting down in the grass for stability as she twisted the device to open it lengthwise and expose its innards. A few minutes of fiddling and muttering, and she snapped it shut and stood up again.

“It will hurt?” Hanzo asked, and when the other two hesitated and did not answer, he took it as a yes. “Bunny first, then. As soon as he sees it distress his brother, he will refuse to cooperate.”

Which just left the act itself, going beyond the barrier and placing themselves in between two large dragons, with the intent of causing them pain. Hanzo wasn’t the only one hesitating. Still, he triggered the disruptor and stepped through the barrier, daring to put a hand on Bunny’s neck and gently tug his head back down.

“Efi, please go down and help Jesse and Orisa,” he said as Bunny’s head settled down next to his body. Even knowing better, he had forgotten, had allowed himself to get comfortable with them and had simply stopped noticing how _big_ they were, how much damage they could do just by accident.

“What? No!” Efi snapped, and instantly went silent when Bunny rumbled in his throat in response to her anger. After giving him a moment to calm back down, she continued in a quieter tone. “I can help. I know how dangerous it is, I’ve always known, and I’ve been here from the start, so don’t push me out now. Here, I can-”

A beat, and then music filled the air, something upbeat, a smooth voice singing in what sounded like Portuguese. Bunny actually turned his head a little at the sound of it, breaking away from his unblinking stare down the hill.

“Very well, but stay on that side of the barrier,” Hanzo said in compromise, and Efi muttered under her breath but agreed. He stepped in closer to Bunny, angling himself so he was tucked in behind the dragon’s head, too close for Bunny to snap around and bite him, then looked over at Reinhardt, who had been searching through Bunny’s mane to find the implant. “Are you ready?”

“No,” Reinhardt said wryly. He set one end of the device against the implant, then looked up and caught Hanzo’s gaze, nodded once, and pressed the button.

Bunny jerked downwards and away from the device with a short sharp screech. He snaked away from Reinhardt and pulled back, shaking his head and ducking low so he could scratch at his neck with a front foot, then twisted around again so he could give Hanzo and Reinhardt a deeply offended glare.

“Did it work?” Efi asked, bouncing on her heels with nervous excitement. “Can he fly? Why isn’t he flying?”

“He hasn’t realized he can, yet,” Reinhardt said patiently. “And it will take time for him to recover completely from the implant’s effects.”

Hanzo spread his hands, stepping in slowly, and Bunny suffered through a pat on the nose before he sat up out of reach. Not forgiven, but no grudges held, either.

Frog was watching them closely, but as Hanzo had expected, he let them get into position anyways- he had seen Bunny’s reaction and he knew it was going to hurt, but it did not hurt much, and he trusted Hanzo enough to take the leap. He cried more than his brother when the shock came, and the look he gave them was more betrayed than insulted. Reinhardt gave him a surprisingly gentle pat on the neck as he stepped away.

Efi leaned forward against the barrier, looking back and forth between the dragons. “Now what?” she asked. She had expected some dramatic leaping into freedom, and all she got was a pair of annoyed dragons. On the other hand, they were focused on something other than the Animal Control agent in the distance now.

“Now we wait, and see what happens first,” Hanzo said, stepping away from Frog as well. He checked his phone for calls he may have missed- he would have to call Genji and let him know they were on their way-

Gunshots, two, three, echoing up the hill.

Bunny’s head snapped up, his jaws gaping open to emit a hissing shriek. He erupted forward and ran full-force into the barrier, bounced back, turned away and bolted halfway across the field before turning back again- he knew he could get through with enough momentum.

“Efi-” Hanzo began, but she was already running, yelling as she went, Orisa’s name the only word Hanzo could pick out. Hanzo disrupted the barrier long enough to duck through and followed her, leaving Reinhardt stranded for as long as it took Orisa to hear and shut the barrier down. He could already hear the thunderous stampede of a dragon approaching at full-tilt.

Bunny hit the barrier at full speed, and it shattered like glass, scrawling across the air like static on a screen before vanishing entirely. It broke his momentum for a moment or two, leaving him stunned and shaking it off, but Hanzo was running down the hill. Jesse had been wearing a gun, hopefully he hadn’t done something so incredibly stupid, but the only other explanation was Widowmaker, and Hanzo did not know which option he preferred.

Bunny caught up quickly, racing beside him down the hill, and pulling ahead- running in leaps and bounds- and Hanzo could see it happening, each leap lasting longer, the descent to the ground slower. He lurched once, coming down hard like someone who had missed the last step in a set of stairs. He hesitated there, lunged again, not running but lifting off-

His feet left the ground and tucked in close, and then he was airborne.

It stole Hanzo’s breath, made him forget what he was doing for a moment. Bunny roared and twisted, sleek and agile as a ribbon cutting through the air, gaining altitude as he went. He twisted again and arrowed straight towards the house and the sound of the gunshots. Hanzo shook off his awe and picked up speed again, stretching his legs to run as fast as he could.

Something slammed into him hard, knocking him forward. A heavy weight settled on his back and slipped tight as iron bars around his chest and jerked him back just before he hit the ground, yanking him upward with a sharp tug. The ground retreated, and kept going, getting more and more distant, and he was starting to realize what had happened.

Hanzo had dreamed of riding dragons as a child, of course, what child didn’t? But instead of triumphantly soaring through the clouds, the wind was stinging his eyes and steel-bar toes were leaving bruises all along his torso and his legs were dangling awkwardly. Frog’s feet were turned so his claws were not ripping Hanzo to shreds, at least, but his grip was still unforgivably tight and hard to breathe around.

Bunny shrieked up ahead, and Hanzo looked up in time to see him swoop low and swat at a moving car with his tail, sending it veering wildly off the road. He curved back in a broad lazy curve, conferred briefly with Frog, and headed beyond them. There were voices raised behind them, yelling, a yelp, then Bunny trilled loudly and Frog picked up speed. Hanzo closed his eyes rather than watch the ground get even further away, already feeling ill from the side-to-side swaying as though Frog were swimming through the air.

There was a noise, a curious chirp, and Hanzo opened his eyes again to look. Bunny was a few meters down and back a bit, his head turned so he could see Hanzo better. He chirped again, and Hanzo smiled in answer, a reassurance. They were only trying to protect him- the last time they heard gunshots, Hanzo and Bunny both had been hurt, and dragons understood enough to know humans were incredibly fragile compared to themselves.

He risked a look beyond Bunny, at the horizon gone soft and hazy with distance. If he focused on something other than the tight grip on his torso and the empty air beneath him, it was pretty incredible. It was not what he had imagined as a child, but still, he was flying with a dragon. Not too many people got to say that.

Bunny shrieked again and Frog answered, cries of pure joy. They turned together, heading nowhere in particular except _away_ , and gloried in the flight.


	13. Chapter 13

He saw her when he stopped looking, of course, when he turned away from the tree line to check in on Draper and his call and caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye. Draper seemed keen to keep an eye on Orisa and so didn’t notice when Jesse ambled off after a soft word with her, one hand placed carefully on the butt of his gun, not approaching the intruder outright but heading her direction. When he risked another look, she was gone, and he stretched his legs into a jog after her.

There weren’t too many places to park on the road out here, given there were large drainage ditches instead of shoulders. Jesse took an educated guess and angled to cut her off, and sure enough, there was a car nestled in the corner of a bend in the road and a woman walking to it. She was holding herself stiffly, like her left shoulder was bothering her, and Jesse smirked to himself. Gabe’d been asking if they could be sure Hanzo had really hit her, and Jesse had taken Hanzo’s side- and rightly so, it seemed.

“Amelie!” he yelled, and she flinched like she had been struck and wheeled around, her face pale and her eyes wide, a snarl on her pretty face.

_Gun_ , Jesse’s mind observed. Gun on her hip, and she was reaching for it, but Jesse was faster on the draw by a long shot.

His first shot took her in the elbow of her good arm, crippling but not killing. His second hit her car- she was moving, ducking to the side, twisting to pull the gun with her left hand and lifting it, and for as weak as that arm seemed her aim was sure and her hand steady. Jesse ducked away himself and her shot hit nothing.

She cried out with the pain, but the noise was lost under the shriek echoing down the hill. She shot again, wild this time, her shoulder jerking backward with even the slightest recoil, covering herself as she ducked into her car. Jesse let her go- how far could she honestly get, in that state?- and turned and headed back up to the house instead.

“What was that?” Draper demanded, but it was more of a _I knew you were hiding something_ tone, rather than honest fear or surprise. Draper was facing the wrong direction to see what was heading towards them but Jesse saw it when Bunny crested the hill and came barreling down, every inch of him ready for war. Orisa was already gone, heading up the hill at a pretty impressive clip, but she didn’t try to intercept him- probably for the best, he was coming down the hill like an avalanche-

Draper was yelling, having finally turned to see Bunny, and then Bunny was gone, rushing past so fast Jesse barely even saw his feet weren’t on the ground anymore. Frog blew past next, and then there was screeching and a crashing, and Jesse turned back to Draper.

“- absolutely illegal, you need to surrender those animals _immediately_ -” the man was saying, like he thought Jesse had any actual control over this situation right now.

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” Jesse said, moving away, back towards the road.

Bunny looped back, approaching low and slow, slinking along like a snake in the grass. He did a hairpin roll and grabbed Jesse with both front feet, squeezing a yelp from him and lifting him right off the ground. Draper was yelling again but Jesse didn’t answer, couldn’t answer before Bunny rolled again and left him behind in a rush. 

In a matter of seconds, the ground was a fatal drop away and still getting further. Jesse grabbed at Bunny’s leg, swearing and kicking uselessly at the air, trying not to panic. This was not at all what he’d signed up for, if someone had mentioned _flying_ he would’ve politely told them to go to hell. Bunny squeezed him tighter in retaliation and Jesse grunted and quit fighting.

Kidnapped by a dragon. That was a new one.

* * *

It took very little time for the dragons to tire. Bunny began to lag first, his injury still fresh enough to hinder him, dropping back and drifting downward with a mournful noise. He turned back, angling for an untended back field, grass tall and weeds and wildflowers growing unchecked. Frog chirruped worriedly and did a broad circle around to come up beside him, riding his brother’s tail all the way down. He dropped Hanzo when he was only a few feet up, rather than try landing while holding him. Hanzo rolled away and sat up and pressed one arm against his stomach, feeling strangely nauseous with the sudden lack of pressure.

Bunny landed hard and someone yelled at him in Spanish. Hanzo pushed himself to his feet, staggered under the strangeness of supporting his own weight, then ran along Bunny’s flank to find Jesse pinned under a clawed foot and struggling to free himself.

“Oh good, they got you too,” he said upon spotting Hanzo. “Do me a favor and tell him to shove off?”

Hanzo pushed at Bunny’s foot until Bunny grumbled and moved it. He turned his head back to stare at Jesse but leaned away, letting him stand up.

“Hate you too, you overgrown gecko,” Jesse told him cheerfully as he brushed grass off his shirt. He had somehow kept his hat, a little flattened for having been trapped under Bunny, but he beat it back into shape with a fist. “Got the implants off, I take it,” he said.

“What happened?” Hanzo asked, ignoring what was most likely a rhetorical question.

“Nothin’,” Jesse said, punching his hat one last time before he jammed it onto his head. “Just had a little disagreement with Widowmaker, is all. Gunshots freak ‘em out?”

“Yes.” Hanzo put a hand on Bunny’s neck, and Bunny whuffed a breath out and put his head down. He was trembling under Hanzo’s hand, shaking with the exertion of the flight, but he did not appear hurt. 

“So why’d they grab us?” Jesse asked. He clucked his tongue at Frog, who had circled around and was sitting next to his brother, staring intently into the sky.

“To protect us,” Hanzo said, touching one hand to the bandages on his bicep, and Jesse nodded grimly. They had not snatched up Efi or Reinhardt- but they did not know Reinhardt well, and Efi had already reached Orisa, who had proven she could hold her own. Only Hanzo and Jesse had needed saving, and so they had been saved.

Jesse sighed heavily and slanted a sideways look at Hanzo. “This wasn’t the plan, right?”

“No,” Hanzo said instantly, although the question was understandable. Jesse shook his head and smiled.

“Course not,” he agreed, and looked away. “So now what? Morrison give you a time frame on the transport?”

“Morrison gave me nothing,” Hanzo said. Frog was growling now, low but present, and he looked up and followed the dragon’s gaze into the sky. He stepped away from Bunny, circling around so he was in front of both dragons. “But I believe I know when the transport is coming.”

It swooped in low over the field, sleek and white and snub-nosed like an old twentieth-century shuttlecraft, coming in with a distant buzzing that rapidly grew into a mechanical roar. It slowed to a halt and pivoted so its bay doors were facing them before it settled down on the opposite end of the field, its engines powering down and panging and hissing as they began to cool. There was a long pause before the bay doors trundled open and a woman, tall and well-built, strode out.

Bunny lifted his head off the ground but kept it low, shifting his body in preparation. Frog shifted as well, moving to cover his brother’s bad side. They both stayed back behind Hanzo.

Jesse strolled past him, giving Hanzo a brief smile before he headed across the field, the woman moving to meet him halfway. They spoke for a moment, Jesse gesturing towards the dragons and the woman glancing over. Then she smiled and laughed and pulled Jesse in for a hug- common signs of friendliness among humans. Bunny remained watchful but Frog relaxed almost instantly, lowering himself back to the ground.

After another minute of talking, the two turned and started coming back over, causing the dragons to both tense up again. Hanzo kept himself carefully loose- hopefully they would follow his lead- and nodded in greeting to the woman when she was close enough. She nodded back, polite and controlled enough to make eye contact despite her obvious desire to gape at the dragons behind him.

“Fareeha Amari,” she said, and held out her hand for a shake. Hanzo took it with a sense of bemusement and introduced himself in turn.

“Hanzo Shimada,” he said, and released her hand to point behind him to each dragon in turn. “That is Frog and Bunny.”

“Frog and Bunny,” Amari echoed, giving Jesse a sharp grin.

“Don’t even ask,” he said. “Bunny’s the mean one, and he got shot a couple days ago so he’s extra cranky. Frog’s okay.”

Someone must have told Amari about the shooting, for she did not react to that piece of news other than to nod in acknowledgement. “Is there some proper way to introduce myself to them?” she asked.

She already had- the dragons judged newcomers by how the people they knew and trusted behaved towards them. Given that Bunny still seemed to tolerate Jesse only for Hanzo’s sake, it was wiser to direct her towards Frog. Hanzo gave her a few rules- no touching, no prolonged eye contact- and she greeted Frog with patience and gravitas. She did not jump up and down and cheer, although she clearly wanted to, and she had a big grin on her face the whole time.

“They are fantastic,” she said after Frog whuffed at her and blew her hair out of its short tail. He had taken to her with all the cautious trust he had given everyone else. In contrast, Bunny stayed still and quiet when she approached, neither retreating nor growling and trying to push his brother away from her. He would never be friendly, but no longer actively trying to kill strangers was a good compromise.

“Yeah, they’re all right,” Jesse said, but he patted Frog on the neck with a fond smile.

“You got here quickly,” Hanzo observed. Amari spared one last glance at Frog before turning to face Hanzo.

“We were already on our way when Jack called,” she said. “We saw these two flying away and figured we had better follow them. Didn’t know they had you two until we were landing.” She looked at the dragons again, frowned and put her hands on her hips. “We brought food and water, and cleared out the bay so they’ve got plenty of room. But how are we supposed to get them on?”

“Easily,” Hanzo said. He stepped forward, catching Jesse by the elbow and pulling him along, gesturing Amari to stay ahead of them. They had barely made it ten feet before Frog made a trilling noise and began to scramble after them. Amari glanced over her shoulder and turned back quickly.

“They’re both coming,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, where one goes, th’other follows,” Jesse said. “We split ‘em up once and we heard all about it, trust me.”

The stumbling point came getting them into the transport itself. Frog came halfway up the ramp before stalling out, and Bunny refused to go that far. Even losing sight of Hanzo and Jesse wasn’t enough to prompt them into coming onboard. Eventually Amari and Jesse had to haul out a couple slabs of cow ribs and drag them from the top of the ramp all the way to the back of the bay, luring Frog into following, while Hanzo coaxed a reluctant Bunny. He was barely inside when Amari called it good enough and shut the doors, nearly catching the tuft on his tail.

“Thinkin’ we coulda used Orisa for this part,” Jesse said as the engines began to power back up. Frog was contentedly chewing on bones, but Bunny was coiling in on himself like a snake preparing to strike, already agitated.

“The omnic?” Amari asked. She had gone to the stairs leading up to the cockpit and was staying there, out of the dragons’ immediate reach. “Should we go back for her?”

“No,” Hanzo said, only half a second faster than Jesse’s drawled _nah_. Amari darted a thoughtful glance between them but said nothing, instead gesturing for one or the other to explain himself. “She would not be able to do much if the dragons were to panic,” Hanzo explained, leaving her to fill in the rest for herself- the dragons were in a tin can now, and they would rip it apart with or without Orisa there.

“Also you’n your pilot might actually get away clean,” Jesse added. “This way, no one’s even seen the transport, so there’s no way to connect this to you.”

Amari looked at the dragons, then at the transport around her. She seemed to accept those answers as good enough, although she looked distinctly unhappy with the implications of Hanzo’s statement. “All right,” she allowed. “Coordinates? And any codes we may need?”

“I will call my brother,” Hanzo said, checking his phone to make sure it still had a connection. He wasn’t scolded for its use, so he stepped away to make the call. Bunny tracked his approach but did nothing, just grumbled a bit as Hanzo passed. He had curled around to protect his bad side but Hanzo could still see the wound. It was a small hole, not even the size of Hanzo’s fist, black with dried blood, a few scales around it cracked or missing entirely. It would heal imperfectly, a small knot of white scar tissue with no scales covering it, but it would heal.

He called Genji for the codes and suffered through listening to a long and rambling debate about the best place to put a transport of this size. By the time he managed to hang up, they were in the air and settled at holding altitude, and Amari and Jesse were playing a card game involving ever-changing rules and a great deal of lying. Hanzo settled down close enough not to be rude but far enough away to discourage attempts at conversation, and watched Frog idly explore the transport. At some point, Bunny unwound enough to flick his tail over, the furry tuft at the end brushing against Hanzo’s legs. Hanzo was only vaguely aware of it, caught somewhere between a doze and proper sleep.

They were out, he realized suddenly. They were gone, they were on their way, they were truly safe for the first time. He put a hand on Bunny’s flank, well away from the wound, and simply rested there for a moment. He felt as though he had been holding his breath since the gunshots- since the sniper in the storm- since he opened the barn door and faced a wall of scales- and now, finally, he was breathing again.

* * *

There was only one figure waiting for them in Nepal, standing back at the edge of the landing pad, heavy robes billowing in the wind and hood pulled down over the face. Still, it was enough for Hanzo to _know_ , and he left the cockpit without a word to Amari or the pilot and headed back down to the bay. Jesse was sitting sideways on one of the long benches, legs stretched out along the seat and hat tipped low to cover his eyes. He had come more alert with the descent pattern, and pushed his hat up when he heard Hanzo approach.

“I told you why I left Japan,” Hanzo said, not really a question.

“Your cousin told you to get out,” Jesse said. He tipped his head to the side to study Hanzo better. “Or were you meanin’ your little spat with your brother?”

Hanzo closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “It was not a _spat_ ,” he began.

Jesse sat up and swung his legs down off the bench, leaning forward to catch one of Hanzo’s hands in his and pull him closer. “You tried to kill him, I know, I’m not stupid,” he said calmly. “And you’ve been runnin’ away from him ever since, haven’t you?”

And now he was waiting outside, and there was nothing Hanzo could do to avoid him anymore. He would see that familiar face, seamed with scars he himself had inflicted, healed now as they hadn’t been when he had seen them last. He would watch for signs of a limp or damaged nerves or severed tendons, and he would know that he had done all that-

The hand around his pulled again, and he sat down hard on the bench beside Jesse. Beyond them, Bunny shifted closer and trilled quietly in concern.

“He claims to have forgiven me,” Hanzo said when his breathing was back under control.

“A’right, that’s his choice,” Jesse agreed. “You don’t believe him?”

_I don’t deserve it_ , Hanzo thought, but he said nothing. He had had a decade to accept that. It only bothered him now because it was no longer an abstract fact, but about to become unavoidable reality.

“Y’know I’m not gonna think less of ya, right?” Jesse said. There was pressure on his hand, Jesse squeezing it. “We all got things we’d rather not see the light of day.”

“You have never tried to kill your brother,” Hanzo said.

“Never had a brother to kill. But if I did, and that gang I ran with told me to?” Jesse clucked his tongue and shook his head.

It did not make Hanzo feel any better, really. But it helped somewhat, to know that Jesse knew what it had been like.

Then the transport lurched and clunked as it landed, and Hanzo stood up and stepped forward, coming between the big doors and the dragons.

“We’ve been dialing down the pressure in the cabin to adjust for the altitude,” Amari said over the intercom. “We’re about equal now in here as with out there, although the air is going to be significantly thinner. I recommend you wait a couple hours before doing anything physically exerting.”

She put an emphasis on the last two words that had Hanzo glancing back at Jesse, who in turn groaned and dragged a hand down his face. “I really do hate her,” he said to no one in particular. 

“There’s winter gear in the storage locker on the port side,” Amari continued, and Hanzo and Jesse both headed over. A parka, scarf, gloves, snow boots Hanzo had to push Jesse into wearing, a woolen hat Jesse flat-out refused to trade for his stupid cowboy hat.

“Ready?” Amari asked- inanely, considering the intercom was one-way and they could not answer- and then the bay doors began to open.

The wind stole in through the crack before the door was even ajar, bitterly cold and cutting through to the bone. It stole the breath from Hanzo’s lungs and from the whole bay, ushering in the flat thinness of mountain air. Hanzo kept his breathing steady and slow, not allowing himself to hyperventilate, and out of the corner of his eye saw Jesse doing the same. Then the doors were open, the ramp extended, and the figure that had been waiting was walking up towards them. It reached up and twitched the hood back and-

It was stupid, so stupid, but the biggest surprise was that his hair was its natural deep brown instead of a decidedly unnatural green. His face was scarred, yes, his eyes dark and warm and his lips quirked up into a smile, but Hanzo’s gaze skated over all of it and snagged on the hair.

“Brother,” Genji said, and put a hand on Hanzo’s shoulder and pulled him in for a tight hug. His grip was strong, at least, and he had walked without a hitch in his stride. Perhaps the damage was purely cosmetic- it would not make it _better_ , but it would help soothe some of the nightmares that plagued Hanzo after bad days.

And then- because he was, after all, a little brother- he stepped back and looked at Jesse and said, “Wow, you really do wear a cowboy hat.”

Jesse, naturally, looked straight to Hanzo at that, brow quirked. He stepped forward all the same, familiar charming smile falling into place. “Jesse McCree. I take it you’ve heard about me.”

“Actually, the hat was most of it,” Genji said, and Hanzo was remembering why he had put thousands of miles between himself and his brother in the first place. Thankfully, Genji chose that moment to look beyond them and to the dragons beyond. Frog was sitting up and watching with interest, and even Bunny had uncoiled enough to take up a posture that was only somewhat defensive. “Hello, gorgeous,” Genji crooned to Frog in Japanese.

Hanzo wasn’t aware he was drifting until something nudged his shoulder and brought him back into the moment. He blinked and looked up at Jesse.

“You doin’ okay?” Jesse asked.

“Yes,” Hanzo said, because he really kind of was. He had expected- he didn’t know what he had expected. Vitriol, spite, hatred and contempt hidden behind the false mask of forgiveness, leaking out in hurtful comments and angry glares. But Genji had smiled, had hugged him, had been hiding nothing but relief behind his measured casualness. It should not have been possible, it was not _right_. But Hanzo was selfish enough to accept it.

Jesse eyed him, judging his truthfulness. He must have passed, for the man turned away and said to Genji, “So where are the monks? They knew we were comin’, right?”

“Of course,” Genji said. “There was some concern about the dragons’ response to omnics, so we thought it best if I came alone at first.”

“They have seen omnics before,” Hanzo said. His voice was quiet and rough at first but gained strength as he spoke. “We had a defensive omnic watching them, and they liked her well enough.”

“Good.” Genji turned back to the dragons, focusing now on Bunny. “Are they aggressive?”

“Not without provocation,” Hanzo said, and instead of taking the obvious line- _well, at least we know what you consider provocation_ \- Genji merely nodded.

“Come on, then,” he said, and stepped backwards, heading out of the transport, and Hanzo followed.

The wind grew worse when not blocked by the body of the ship, cutting like knives across exposed skin, cold enough to be physically painful in the lungs. The air itself was not too terrible out of the wind, though, so Hanzo followed Genji around to take shelter in the lee created by the big ship. Jesse came ambling along at his own pace, hand on his hat to keep it on his head, and they stood and watched and waited.

Frog came first, of course. The gold-whiskered snout pushed around the corner and sniffed at the air curiously, then the rest of the face followed, then a good deal of neck. More sniffing, a sneeze- dragons could adapt to extreme temperature and air pressure changes quickly, being high-altitude flyers, but this could well be Frog’s first experience this far above sea level. He turned to face into the wind, clearly enjoying it. A few more steps, and his front legs were out and on solid ground, toes flexing as his claws crunched against the snow, and another nose was appearing around the corner.

The edge of the landing pad dropped off into a severe cliff, and Frog came to the ledge, neck stretched out long as he stared around. He lifted himself up, front feet floating in the air, testing to be sure his flight had not been stolen away again. He looked back at his brother, who was watching him closely in turn.

Then he roared, a joyful sound, and leapt forward off the cliff, and flew.

It was easier to appreciate it now that Hanzo was not getting an up-close view of it- Frog cut through the air like a knife, like a ribbon on the breeze, like a fish in a gentle stream, an arrow of gold and blue that darted about with no purpose but to revel in the act of flying. He disappeared around behind the bulk of the transport, and when he came back again, he had been joined by his brother, who obviously could not tolerate sitting and watching and doing nothing.

They wove together for a moment before breaking apart, looping off in separate directions to explore, and Hanzo realized he had come out from the shelter of the transport to watch them go. The stinging cold did not matter anymore because this was what he had been hardly daring to dream for this whole time, the absolute best possible outcome. They were _free_.

“So they go where they want, no barriers or nothin’?” Jesse asked.

“Wherever they want,” Genji agreed. “We will try to make this place home for them, of course, but if they decide to leave and fly off to China, or Australia, or Japan- we will not stop them.”

“Hopefully not Australia,” Jesse said. “Last thing the world needs is junker dragons.”

Hanzo turned away from the sight as someone approached him, put a hand on his elbow. Genji. “I don’t think I see it,” he said in Japanese. “But if you like him, that’s good enough for me.”

“He’s had a stressful day,” Hanzo replied, but Genji’s simple acceptance warmed something in him.

“You are welcome to stay,” Genji said, and Hanzo’s breath seized in his lungs. Either oblivious or purposely ignoring it, Genji continued. “In fact, I am formally asking it. They will need something familiar, for a while at least.”

No, Hanzo said immediately- except no sound came out, no breath to support it. And he was grateful for it, when he had a second to think about it. Genji was right, the dragons would need something to hold onto in a fast-changing world. Hanzo could not let his issues with his brother- his own issues, not even mutual issues- get in the way and potentially harm them.

“I will think about it,” he allowed finally, and Genji, who had clearly been expecting that no, smiled in delight.

“The pathway is over there,” he said, pointing in the direction of the temple and village they had passed on their flight in. “Tell your pilot they can come down if they’d like.”

And he walked off, easy as that, as though he had not just uprooted Hanzo’s entire world and given it a good shake.

Jesse moved in close once he was gone, his expression still. “Fareeha says we’re gonna be here ‘til tomorrow morning at least,” he said. “So I’m thinkin’, hit the village, check on the locals, make sure they’re gonna take good care of the boys?”

Hanzo nodded, numbly silent, and Jesse pressed against him for a moment before stepping away, heading down the path and leaving Hanzo alone.

* * *

The locals, as it turned out, were mostly long-limbed, spindly omnics with solemn-looking faces and quiet demeanors. Most of them greeted the newcomers with a nod or a kind word before heading about their business, polite but not welcoming, which was about par for the course as far as Jesse’s experiences with spirituality went. A nod and a smile and move right along, thank you, nothing here for a man with a gun on his hip and blood on his hands.

He’d left the gun on the ship, at least. He could think ahead that much.

There were a scattered handful of humans about, not just Genji and the visitors, so inside the buildings was comfortably warm and homey. Hanzo spent hours pacing aimlessly, going from window to window and walking loops in courtyards outside, watching the dragons and avoiding pretty much everyone. Jesse let him go, keeping his thoughts to himself- how dearly he wanted to see the look on Hanzo’s face if he just walked up to him and said _I do speak Japanese, y’know_ , but that wasn’t fair. No pressure, he’d said, and he meant it, and-

The dragons really did need Hanzo more, truth be told. Jesse liked him, wanted him around, would miss him if he were gone. The dragons actually _needed_ him- he’d noticed them keeping an eye on Hanzo as much as Hanzo kept an eye on them, one of them within eyeshot at all times.

So Jesse left him to his pacing, and chased down Genji instead.

“You know he hates himself,” he said carelessly, when Genji had stepped away from a cluster of monks and was walking past the doorway Jesse was leaning against.

“I know,” Genji said, slowing down and stepping to one side so Jesse could settle in beside him.

“And it ain’t somethin’ you can fix,” Jesse added. “ ‘Specially not by keepin’ him here.”

“I _know_ ,” Genji repeated, temper flaring and fading away again, bright and fast like a firecracker. He smiled, a touch rueful. “But I have to do something, and helping his dragons is something I can do.”

“A’right,” Jesse said. He wanted a cigarillo, but he hadn’t thought to grab any before his kidnapping-by-dragon, and he didn’t think the monks would appreciate it even if he had. 

“And you?” Genji asked, and Jesse gave him a blank look. “You cannot fix him either,” he explained. “I don’t know what he told you, but my brother has never had a serious relationship before.”

“We’ve been on one date, and he didn’t even know that’s what it was,” Jesse protested.

“He said he likes you. He has never _liked_ anyone before.” He took two long strides and cut ahead of Jesse, stopping him in his tracks. He was only slightly taller than Hanzo, still short enough that Jesse could see over the top of his head with little trouble, but somehow he seemed almost intimidating in that narrow hallway. “My brother is a former yakuza, and I will not insult him by implying he cannot take care of himself,” he said. “But just remember, I was raised in that family too.”

“Huh,” Jesse said, slouching down in direct contrast to Genji’s rigidly proper posture, all lazy smiles and curving angles. “See now, for a former yakuza, that weren’t very impressive. Back when I was still bringin’ people home, thinkin’ my old man wasn’t just gonna scare them all off, he was doin’ this bit with one of his shotguns-”

The world blurred just for a second, and then his back was to a wall and a line of cold fire was laid against his neck. He didn’t need to check to know what it was.

“If you hurt him, I will hurt you. How is that?” Genji offered. He sounded almost amused despite the knife and the posturing.

“Better,” Jesse said. “If I hurt him, I’ll even stand still and let ya.”

Genji pushed away and made the knife disappear again- shuriken, not knife, Jesse realized, catching a glimpse of it in motion, and why did a refugee in a temple need shuriken in the first place? “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said, but he was smiling as he turned away, and Jesse decided he’d passed the test.

* * *

The dragon discovered the aerie late at night, the tunnels and caves and nooks and crannies carved high into the mountain, and spent hours crawling over it like busy little bees, and Hanzo came to his brother with a wordless nod.

The transport left much as it had arrived, only there were two figures watching on the platform instead of one, and Jesse was left pacing the empty echoing bay by himself, hearing Hanzo’s voice in his ears, _three months at the most_.

Fareeha came down once they were in the air and safely away, and said nothing, just wrapped one arm around his shoulders and leaned into him, and he leaned back and tried very hard not to feel anything for a while.


	14. Chapter 14

He’d honestly expected to be arrested when he made it home, an angry Draper leading the charge. He came home to a notice taped to his front door instead, a fine due to be paid with a handwritten note by Gabe at the bottom claiming it was groundless and he was going to contest it. Jesse plucked it off the door and left it on the kitchen counter and went to bed to sleep for about twelve hours straight.

The place was so quiet and empty without the dragons now, he learned as he got to work the next day. His work ethic of late had been criminally lax and the ranch had suffered for it, and he set about tending to the chores he’d been letting slide for a week with a single-minded determination. He didn’t stop, didn’t think, didn’t let himself so much as glance up the hill.

Gabe came by the second day and helped out, kind of. He wasn’t naturally chatty, so his constant attempts at filling the silence came across mostly as awkward and rambly. Widowmaker was gone, disappeared from her wrecked car before anyone could reach it, hopefully holed up miles away and healing so she could move on to her next job and not come back for revenge. Hamilton’s house had been gutted by the authorities, who had been tipped off that the dragons might have actually been from there. Jack and Gabe were hoping that between all the piles of junk and blueprints and notebooks full of ideas, there would be a lead on whoever hired Widowmaker, and the possibility of an arrest. Efi had gone home and had had to explain Orisa to literally everyone, and was still in the middle of a gently-worded pissing match with the local police over whether or not Orisa could just hang around town and live in someone’s backyard shed. Fareeha got away with nothing but a scolding and a demerit, which she apparently took with pride.

They barbecued steaks and ate in blessed silence, and Gabe stayed over and crashed on the couch without bothering to ask first, and things were just a little bit better.

* * *

The eighth day back, Jesse opened his door to step out on the porch and only just checked himself before he ran smack into Efi.

“You’re supposed to be going to the sanctuary today,” she said, almost accusingly.

“I am,” Jesse allowed, because he was on schedule for it. He’d been planning to have someone from the sanctuary run out to pick up the load of dragon feed- he was busy, he wasn’t _avoiding_ the sanctuary, he just had a lot to do- but Efi jerked her chin up in a nod.

“Okay, well, I’m going with,” she said.

“Are ya, now,” Jesse said, not a question, but Efi answered him anyway.

“My mom wants me to have a hobby outside of building stuff,” she explained. “I decided to volunteer at the sanctuary, only Mister Morrison told me no, and Orisa wouldn’t take me back there again. So now I’m going with you.”

Jesse stared down at her. He stepped around her, leaned forward and looked around, and there was Orisa, standing in the yard and patiently waiting. She waved her hand. “Hello, Mister Jesse,” she chirped in her normal cheerful greeting.

“You gotta stop takin’ her everywhere just ‘cause she tells you to,” Jesse told her, then looked back at Efi. “What do you do, ride her around like a horse?”

“When are we leaving?” Efi countered, chin up and hands on her hips, and- well. The thought of siccing her on Jack, who Jesse would forever and ever resent just the tiniest bit, would be worth the heartache of visiting the sanctuary.

“In an hour,” Jesse said. “Go apologize to Orisa an’ tell your parents to buy you a bike or somethin’.” And he stepped back and shut the door in Efi’s face, leaving her to wait.

An hour and twenty minutes later, and the main building at the sanctuary was coming into view around the curve. Efi, who had settled quietly into the passenger seat, sat forward in anticipation, and Jesse had to look away to hide his smile. He like the kid, despite everything.

Then he saw the building, and his smile fell a little bit. “What the hell,” he said.

There was scaffolding around the building’s western half, a second and probably even third story going in, a strange little tower that seemed to be ninety percent window, if the beams and bars and bones of the structure were any indication. There was also a gate on the drive, currently sitting open but armed with a series of intimidating-looking locks.

“What’s goin’ on, d’you know?” Jesse asked, rhetorically, expecting a denial and equal curiosity. Instead, Efi shrugged and looked away with disinterest, and Jesse glanced at her sharply. “Efi? What’s goin’ on?”

“Nothing,” she said, realized it was a bad lie, tried again. “I don’t know. Mister Morrison said I wasn’t allowed to volunteer here, remember?”

“Efi,” Jesse said in his best _scolding parent_ voice, and she turned on him instantly.

“They said to leave you alone, but you weren’t coming out here on your own. But now you’re here and I got you here and that’s what matters.”

“You lied to me,” Jesse said.

“No, Mister Morrison really did say no. The age limit on volunteers is sixteen, thirteen if they’re accompanied by a guardian, which Mister Morrison said Orisa qualifies as. So I’ve gotta wait another year.”

“Kid, if you think I won’t turn this car around-” Jesse began.

“Hanzo got back yesterday,” Efi said, and Jesse shut up mid-word. “He had to come talk to Mister Morrison about something and Orisa was here and she saw him. He was supposed to come see you this morning, but Orisa said he was really tired, so I guess he fell asleep instead.”

“He know you were connivin’ to get me here?” Jesse asked, but he was moving again, heading up the drive and through the open gate.

“No,” Efi said. “But you’re supposed to be here today. Plus, he’s bad at these kind of things.”

Jesse drove on in silence, because it was entirely true. He stopped and let her out at the main building before following the familiar road back around to the kennels in the back. He had his windows down, and he could hear the dragons greeting him, tails thumping and teeth clattering. He could hear something of their much larger cousins in their voices, a tiger’s roar lurking in a cat’s meow.

He stopped the truck and got out and headed over to the entryway into the pens, and sure enough- in a moment so familiar it punched the breath from his lungs- Hanzo approached from inside. He was smiling, soft and shy and tired.

“So your idea of three months is a little off,” Jesse said as Hanzo opened the gate and came out. Hanzo looked at him, eyeing him over critically.

“The dragons can look after themselves,” he said, and looked pointedly at Jesse’s beard, grown well beyond any attempts at shaping or trimming, and his shirt, creased and smelling of three-day-old sweat. “You, on the other hand, clearly cannot.”

Jesse smiled and stepped forward until they were touching, leaning against each other ever so gently, careful oh so careful. Hanzo was as predictable and easy to pin down as the wind.

Then a thought occurred, and he asked suspiciously, “You weren’t just runnin’ away from your brother again, right?”

“No,” Hanzo said. He watched as his hand, seemingly of its own volition, rose up and wrapped around Jesse’s, fingers carefully winding together. “He is tolerable in small doses, and several of the monks contrived to keep us separated when he was being especially annoying.”

“Well, that’s how little brothers usually seem to be, so you’re headin’ the right direction,” Jesse said. He gave Hanzo’s hand a gentle squeeze and forced himself to continue, near choking on the words. “Seriously though, you ain’t worried the boys are gonna miss you?”

“They will,” Hanzo allowed. “They both like Genji well enough, he will be able to keep thing under control.”

“Doesn’t sound very long-term,” Jesse said. “You’re not worried they’re gonna get tired of it and fly off?”

Hanzo hesitated, then stepped away so he could level a strange look at Jesse. Then he glanced back, towards the main building. And Jesse- the thing was, Jesse wasn’t actually stupid, he just played it sometimes when convenient. He looked at the work being done again with different eyes, looking at it as a dragon would, and-

“You’re bringin’ ‘em back?” he asked.

“Nepal has offered to declare them, at the behest of the Shambali,” Hanzo said. “It will be a while- months, for real this time- but hopefully, yes. They will be able to return, and safely this time. This is something Morrison suggested, until a more permanent structure can be built, and I will have to return to Nepal several times before they can return, but-”

He rambled on, and Jesse let him, thinking with a grin about the dragons hollering at each other for all hours of the night, poking noses and claws and whiskers at every new thing, tussling like puppies, generally getting in the way and being loud and inconvenient and far, far too big to scold appropriately.

“So the Shambali liked the idea of dragons more than the reality of ‘em, huh?” he asked.

“They like them, they are simply overwhelmed,” Hanzo said. “They have experience with dragons, just not...”

“Teenagers.”

Hanzo glared at him, mock-upset, and Jesse grinned and ducked his head. The elation was zinging under his skin like lightning, like he wanted to cheer, like he wanted to start running and never stop. It seemed contagious, for Hanzo shifted aimlessly, visibly fighting off a smile. He was excited, Jesse realized. Genuinely happy, probably for the first time since Jesse knew him.

“They were happy here,” he said. “They will be happier still, when they have the freedom to come and go as they please. The monks wish them nothing but the best, so they are returning them to us.”

“All right,” Jesse said, and took Hanzo’s hand again. It was stupid- so small- but it made him smile. “This was all pretty awesome. So what are we gonna do on our _second_ date?”

And Hanzo leaned into him and smiled and laughed.


End file.
